“I gotta live with that.”

“But I can't. That kid's long gone, and this old man is all that's left.”

“I look back on the way I was then: a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him.”

“There isn't a day that goes by when I don't feel regret. Not because I'm in here, or because you think I should.”

“I know what you think it means, sonny. To me it's just a made-up word.”

“Rehabilitated?... Well, now, let me see. You know, I don't have any idea what that means.”

“Yeah, one day when I got a long, white beard and two or three marbles rolling around upstairs, they'll let me out.”

“That don't make you a murderer. A bad husband, maybe.”

“If they ever catch on, though, he'll wind up in here wearing a number himself.”

“Well, we ought to file that under "Educational" too. Oughtn't we?”

“It's got no use on the inside. You'd better get used to that idea.”

“Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”

“Only guilty man in Shawshank.”

“You'd have to be human first. They don't qualify.”

“You're gonna fit right in. Everybody in here's innocent. Didn't you know that?”

“I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope!”

“I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand.”

“I find I'm so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it is the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain.”

“Terrible thing to live in fear.”

“There's a harsh truth to face: I'm not going to make it on the outside.”

“I like to think the last thing that went through his head, other than that bullet, was how the hell Andy Dufresne ever got the best of him.”

“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 now that they're gone.”

“I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright.”

“Geology is the study of pressure and time. That's all it takes, really.”

“I remember thinking it would take a man six hundred years to tunnel through the wall with it. Old Andy did it in less than twenty.”

“It was like some beautiful bird 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.”

“I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can't be expressed in words, and it makes your heart ache because of it.”

“I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't wanna know.”

“They send you here for life; that's exactly what they take. The part that counts, anyway.”

“After enough time passes, you get to depend on them. That's institutionalized.”

“These prison walls are funny. First you hate them, then you get used to them.”

“There must be a con like me in every prison in America. I'm the guy who can get it for you.”