“More hands go up. Andy and the others are paraded along, forced by their chains to take tiny baby steps, flinching under the barrage of jeers and shouts. The old-timers are shaking the fence, trying to make the newcomers shit their pants. Some of the new fish shout back, but mostly they look terrified. Especially Andy.
I must admit I didn't think much of Andy first time I laid eyes on him. He might'a been important on the outside, but in here he was just a little turd in prison grays. Looked like a stiff breeze could blow him over. That was my first impression of the man.”
***
"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 best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free."
***
“I had Mr. Mozart to keep me company. Hardly felt the time at all.”
“Oh, they let you tote that record player down there, huh? I could'a swore they confiscated that stuff.”
(Andy taps his heart, his head-)
“The music was here...and here. That's the one thing they can't confiscate, not ever. That's the beauty of it. Haven't you ever felt that way about music, Red?”
“Played a mean harmonica as a younger man. Lost my taste for it. Didn't make much sense on the inside. “
“Here's where it makes most sense. We need it so we don't forget.”
“Forget?”
“That there are things in this world not carved out of gray stone. That there's a small place inside of us they can never lock away, and that place is called hope.”
“Hope is a dangerous thing. Drive a man insane. It's got no place here. Better get used to the idea.”
***
"Tell you where I'd go. Zihuatanejo."
"Zihuatanejo?"
"Mexico. Little place right on the Pacific. You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific? They say it has no memory. That's where I'd like to finish out my life, Red. A warm place with no memory. Open a little hotel right on the beach. Buy some worthless old boat and fix it up like new. Take my guests out charter fishing.
You know, a place like that, I'd need a man who can get things."
Red stares at Andy, laughs.
“Jesus, Andy. I couldn't hack it on the outside. Been in here too long. I'm an institutional man now. Like old Brooks Hatlen was.”
“You underestimate yourself.”
“Bullshit. In here I'm the guy who can get it for you. Out there, all you need are Yellow Pages. I wouldn't know where to begin.
Pacific Ocean? Hell. Like to scare me to death, somethin' that big.”
“Not me… I don't think it's too much to want. To look at the stars just after sunset. Touch the sand. Wade in the water. Feel free.”
“Goddamn it, Andy, stop! Don't do that to yourself! Talking shitty pipedreams! Mexico's down there, and you're in here, and that's the way it is!”
“You're right. It's down there, and I'm in here. I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.”
***
“In 1966, Andy Dufresne escaped from Shawshank Prison.
All they found of him was a muddy set of prison clothes, a bar of soap, and an old rock-hammer damn near worn down to the nub.
I remember thinking it would take a man six hundred years to tunnel through the wall with it. Andy did it in less than twenty.”
***
“Get busy living or get busy dying. That is goddamn right.”***
“Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”excerpts from
- script- angelfire
-also read
