Andy Dufresne Quotes

Andy Dufresne: 'That's the beauty of music. They can't get that from you...haven't you ever felt that way about music?' Red: 'I played a mean harmonica as a younger man. Lost interest in it though. Didn't make much sense in here.' Andy: 'Here's where it makes the most sense. You need it so you don't forget.' Red: 'Forget?' Andy: 'Forget that...there are places in this world that aren't made out of stone. That there's something inside...that they can't get to, that they can't touch. That's yours.' Red: 'What're you talking about?' Andy: 'Hope.

I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. You get busy living, or get busy dying.” —Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption

Because guys like us, Red, we know there's a third choice. An alternative to staying simon-pure and bathing in the filth and the slime. It's the alternative that grown-ups all over the world pick. You balance off the walk through the hog-wallow against what it gains you. You choose the lesser of the two evils and try to keep your good intentions in front of you. And I guess you judge how well you are doing by how well you sleep at night...and what your dreams are like.

It's amazing how many men remember him that way, and amazing how many men were on that work-crew when Andy Dufresne faced down Byron Hadley. I thought there were nine or ten of us, but by 1955 there must have been two hundred of us, maybe more... if you believed what you heard.

Andy Dufresne who had waded in shit and came out clean on the other side, Andy Dufresne, headed for the Pacific. •

that’s the thing that really separates us from the animals, I think—and I felt something else, too. A sense of awe for the man’s brute persistence. But I never knew just how persistent Andy Dufresne could be until much later.

Every now and then I’d bring these points up to Andy, who would only smile, his eyes far away, and say he was thinking about it. Apparently he’d been thinking about a lot of other things, as well. • • • In 1975, Andy Dufresne escaped from Shawshank. He hasn’t been recaptured, and I don’t think he ever will be. In fact, I don’t think Andy Dufresne even exists anymore.

Así que, bueno, si me pides una respuesta clara a la pregunta de si intento hablarte de un hombre o de la leyenda que fue creciendo alrededor de ese hombre como lo hace la perla alrededor de un granito de arena, tendría que decirte que la respuesta está en algún punto intermedio entre hombre y leyenda. Lo único que sé a ciencia cierta es que Andy Dufresne no era como yo ni como ningún otro individuo que yo haya conocido desde que estoy en la cárcel. Entró en la cárcel con quinientos dólares en su puerta trasera, pero aquel sesudo hijo de perra logró no sé cómo entrar también con algo más. Un sentido de su propia valía, quizás, o la certeza de que al final ganaría él... o quizá fuera sólo el sentido de la libertad, dentro incluso de estos muros grises malditos. Era una especie de luz interior que llevaba consigo a todas partes. Sólo una vez le vi perder esa luz, y también eso forma parte de esta historia.

I do it for the same reason that a good butcher will only sell you fresh meat: I got a reputation and I want to keep it. The only two things I refuse to handle are guns and heavy drugs. I won’t help anyone kill himself or anyone else. I have enough killing on my mind to last me a lifetime. Yeah, I’m a regular Neiman-Marcus. And so when Andy Dufresne came to me in 1949 and asked if I could smuggle Rita Hayworth into the prison for him, I said it would be no problem at all. And it wasn’t. • • • When Andy came to Shawshank in 1948, he was thirty years old. He was a short, neat little man with sandy hair and small, clever hands.

Only Andy didn’t drink. I already told you about his drinking habit. He sat hunkered down in the shade, hands dangling between his knees, watching us and smiling a little. It’s amazing how many men remember him that way, and amazing how many men were on that work-crew when Andy Dufresne faced down Byron Hadley. I thought there were nine or ten of us, but by 1955 there must have been two hundred of us, maybe more… if you believed what you heard. So yeah—if you asked me to give you a flat-out answer to the question of whether I’m trying to tell you about a man or a legend that got made up around the man, like a pearl around a little piece of grit—I’d have to say that the answer lies somewhere in between.

Overlooking the Pacific Ocean reminded me of Andy Dufresne the fictional character that Stephen King brought to life in his triumphant tale – Shaw-Shank Redemption. My visual memory recalled the words ‘I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams’ I can still hear Morgan Freeman whispering these words in my head. Sometimes in life we get to see a past event coincide with what is happening in the moment; leaving you wondering ‘how in the hell did that happen?’ I realized that all the things that I had experienced up to this very moment as I looked out over the Pacific Ocean served a purpose. Did I understand each one? Not even close. I only saw the harmony, the magic, stuff we feel: things we cannot touch – only the heart knows this space.

Andy smiled and tapped the side of my head. “Not bad. There’s more up there than marshmallows, I guess. But we took care of the possibility that Jim might die while I was in the slam. The box is in the Peter Stevens name, and once a year the firm of lawyers that served as Jim’s executors sends a check to the Casco to cover the rental of the Stevens box. “Peter Stevens is inside that box, just waiting to get out. His birth certificate, his Social Security card, and his driver’s license. The license is six years out of date because Jim died six years ago, true, but it’s still perfectly renewable for a five-dollar fee. His stock certificates are there, the tax-free municipals, and about eighteen bearer bonds in the amount of ten thousand dollars each.” I whistled. “Peter Stevens is locked in a safe deposit box at the Casco Bank in Portland and Andy Dufresne is locked in a safe deposit box at Shawshank,” he said.

I saw him stoop, pick up a pebble . . . and it disappeared up his sleeve. That inside sleeve-pocket is an old prison trick. Up your sleeve or just inside the cuff of your pants. And I have another memory, very strong but unfocused, maybe something I saw more than once. This memory is of Andy Dufresne walking across the exercise yard on a hot summer day when the air was utterly still. Still, yeah . . . except for the little breeze that seemed to be blowing sand around Andy Dufresne’s feet. So maybe he had a couple of cheaters in his pants below the knees. You loaded the cheaters up with fill and then just strolled around, your hands in your pockets, and when you felt safe and unobserved, you gave the pockets a little twitch. The pockets, of course, are attached by string or strong thread to the cheaters. The fill goes cascading out of your pantslegs as you walk. The World War II POWs who were trying to tunnel out used the dodge.

I came very close to burning the document you have just read. They search outgoing parolees almost as carefully as they search incoming “new fish.” And beyond containing enough dynamite to assure me of a quick turnaround and another six or eight years inside, my “memoirs” contained something else: the name of the town where I believe Andy Dufresne to be. Mexican police gladly cooperate with the American police, and I didn’t want my freedom—or my unwillingness to give up the story I’d worked so long and hard to write—to cost Andy his. Then I remembered how Andy had brought in his five hundred dollars back in 1948, and I took out my story of him the same way. Just to be on the safe side, I carefully rewrote each page which mentioned Zihuatanejo. If the papers had been found during my “outside search,” as they call it at The Shank, I would have gone back in on turnaround . . . but the cops would have been looking for Andy in a Peruvian sea-coast town named Las Intrudres.

There was no modern cement until 1870 or so, and no modern concrete until after the turn of the century. Mixing concrete is as delicate a business as making bread. You can get it too watery or not watery enough. You can get the sand-mix too thick or too thin, and the same is true of the gravel-mix. And back in 1934, the science of mixing the stuff was a lot less sophisticated than it is today. The walls of Cellblock 5 were solid enough, but they weren’t exactly dry and toasty. As a matter of fact, they were and are pretty damned dank. After a long wet spell they would sweat and sometimes even drip. Cracks had a way of appearing, some an inch deep. They were routinely mortared over. Now here comes Andy Dufresne into Cellblock 5. He’s a man who graduated from the University of Maine’s school of business, but he’s also a man who took two or three geology courses along the way. Geology had, in fact, become his chief hobby. I imagine it appealed to his patient, meticulous nature. A ten-thousand-year ice age here. A million years of mountain-building there. Plates of bedrock grinding against each other deep under the earth’s skin over the millennia. Pressure. Andy told me once that all of geology is the study of pressure.

Why?” Andy repeated. “Can’t you tell me why you did it? You knew I wasn’t going to talk about. . . about anything you might have had going. You knew that. So why?” “Because people like you make me sick,” Norton said deliberately. “I like you right where you are, Mr. Dufresne, and as long as I am warden here at Shawshank, you are going to be right here. You see, you used to think that you were better than anyone else. I have gotten pretty good at seeing that on a man’s face. I marked it on yours the first time I walked into the library. It might as well have been written on your forehead in capital letters. That look is gone now, and I like that just fine. It is not just that you are a useful vessel, never think that. It is simply that men like you need to learn humility. Why, you used to walk around that exercise yard as if it was a living room and you were at one of those cocktail parties where the hellbound walk around coveting each others’ wives and husbands and getting swinishly drunk. But you don’t walk around that way anymore. And I’ll be watching to see if you should start to walk that way again. Over a period of years, I’ll be watching you with great pleasure. Now get the hell out of here.

Yes, of course it is. So just for a moment, Dufresne, let’s assume that Blatch exists and that he is still ensconced in the Rhode Island State Penitentiary. Now what is he going to say if we bring this kettle of fish to him in a bucket? Is he going to fall down on his knees, roll his eyes, and say: ‘I did it! I did it! By all means add a life term onto my charge!’?” “How can you be so obtuse?” Andy said, so low that Chester could barely hear. But he heard the warden just fine. “What? What did you call me?” “Obtuse!” Andy cried. “Is it deliberate?” “Dufresne, you’ve taken five minutes of my time—no, seven—and I have a very busy schedule today. So I believe we’ll just declare this little meeting closed and—” “The country club will have all the old time-cards, don’t you realize that?” Andy shouted. “They’ll have tax-forms and W-twos and unemployment compensation forms, all with his name on them! There will be employees there now that were there then, maybe Briggs himself! It’s been fifteen years, not forever! They’ll remember him! They will remember Blatch! If I’ve got Tommy to testify to what Blatch told him, and Briggs to testify that Blatch was there, actually working at the country club, I can get a new trial! I can—” “Guard! Guard! Take this man away!” “What’s the matter with you?” Andy said, and Chester told me he was very nearly screaming by then. “It’s my life, my chance to get out, don’t you see that? And you won’t make a single long-distance call to at least verify Tommy’s story? Listen, I’ll pay for the call! I’ll pay for—” Then there was a sound of thrashing as the guards grabbed him and started to drag him out. “Solitary,” Warden Norton said dryly. He was probably fingering his thirty-year pin as he said it. “Bread and water.” And so they dragged Andy away, totally out of control now, still screaming at the warden; Chester said you could hear him even after the door was shut: “It’s my life! It’s my life, don’t you understand it’s my life?

Andy Dufresne : Dumb-ass? "Dumas". You know what it's about? You'll like it, it's about a prison break.

So that one night after the Bumble rando blew me off and I was emotionally ravaged, practically kneeling on the ground, arms out in the Scott Stapp/Jesus position a la Andy Dufresne on the poster of Shawshank Redemption, I thought to myself, ‘Am I going to fall the fuck apart every single time some guy I meet doesn’t end up being the one?