Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption

Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.

It always comes down to just two choices. Get busy living, or get busy dying.

Remember that hope is a good thing, Red, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

I don't have to listen to rumors about a man when I can judge him for myself.

They say The Pacific has no memory. That's where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory.

I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up DOES rejoice. But still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend.

Andy was the part of me they could never lock up, the part of me that will rejoice when the gates finally open for me and I walk out in my cheap suit with my twenty dollars of mad-money in my pocket. That part of me will rejoice no matter how old and broken and scared the rest of me is. I guess it's just that Andy had more of that part than me, and used it better. -Red

I hope he died of intestinal cancer in a part of the world where morphine is as of yet undiscovered.

It always comes down to two choices; Get busy living, or get busy dying.

Anyway, as the old barrelhouse song says, My God, how the money rolled in. Norton must have subscribed to the old Puritan notion that the best way to figure out which folks God favours is by checking their bank acounts.

Writing about yourself seems to be a lot like sticking a branch into clear river-water and rolling up the muddy bottom.

They found him guilty, and brother, if Maine had the death penalty, he would have done the airdance before that spring's crocuses poked their heads out of the dirt.

I find I’m so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it’s the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope...

It goes back to what I said about Andy wearing his freedom like an invisibility coat, about how he never really developed a prison mentality. His eyes never got that dull look.

I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.

I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are better left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t expressed in words, and it makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a grey place dares to dream. It was as if some beautiful bird had flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.

What was right with him he’d only give you a little at a time. What was wrong with him he kept bottled up inside.

When you take away a man’s freedom and teach him to live in a cell, he seems to lose his ability to think in dimensions.

I asked him once what the posters meant to him, and he gave me a peculiar, surprised sort of look. “Why, they mean the same thing to me as they do to most cons, I guess,” he said. “Freedom.

You balance off your walk through the hog-wallow against what it gains you. You choose the lesser of two evils and try to keep your good intentions in front of you.

At first you can't stand those four walls, then you get so you can abide them, then you get so you accept them... and then, as your body and your mind ad your spirit adjust to life on an HO scale, you get to love them.

Some birds are not meant to be caged

Claro que recuerdo el nombre. Zihuatanejo. Un nombre así es demasiado bello para olvidarlo. Estoy nerviosísimo; tan nervioso que casi no puedo sostener el lápiz en mi mano temblorosa. Creo que es el nerviosismo que sólo un hombre libre puede sentir, un hombre libre que inicia un largo viaje cuyo final es incierto. Tengo la esperanza de que Andy esté allá. Tengo la esperanza de poder cruzar la frontera. Tengo la esperanza de encontrar a mi amigo y estrecharle la mano. Tengo la esperanza de que el Pacífico sea tan azul como en mis sueños. Tengo esperanza.

I look after my own ass first. I have to. It’s cracked already,

It's the alternative that grown-ups all over the world pick. You balance off your walk through the hog-wallow against what it gains you. You choose the lesser of two evils and try to keep your good intentions in front of you. And I guess you judge how well you're doing by how well you sleep at night...and what your dreams are like.

You may remember the old question, the one that’s supposed to define your outlook on life when you answer it. For Byron Hadley the answer would always be half empty, the glass is half empty. Forever and ever, amen. If you gave him a cool drink of apple cider, he’d think about vinegar. If you told him his wife had always been faithful to him, he’d tell you it was because she was so damn ugly.