Thoughts on The Shawshank Redemption

I realized that I prefer expression of ideas in words rather than in speech. Which explains why I think subtitles are invaluable in movies. Give me the movie plus the script anytime. Movies are made primarily with the written script (though often times there are much improvisation). Words in the visual form somehow, when I read them, appeal much more to me than mere hearing of the same words. Watching Shawshank Redemption again (this time on DVD) allowed me to appreciate the movie more. These are my favourite lines of the movie. I believe what made this film such a great one is because of the script.

1. Judge: You strike me as a particularly icy and remorseless man, Mr Dufresne. It chills my blood just to look at you.

2. Red: Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.

3. Andy: Do you know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific?
Red: No.
Andy: They say it has no memory. That's where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory.

4. Andy: It's my life! Don't you understand? IT'S MY LIFE!

5. Red: A wifekiller banker.
Andy: I'm innocent.
Red: You're gonna fit right in. Everyone in here is innocent, you know that? Heywood, what you in here for?
Heywood: Didn't do it. Lawyer f***ed me.

6. Fat man: You don't understand! I'm not supposed to be here!
Someone in prison: Me neither! They run this place like a f***ing prison!
(This got me cracked up like mad. Very witty humour.)

7. Andy: There are places in this world that aren't made of stone. There's something inside..that they can't get to, they can't touch. That's yours.
Red: What are you talking about?
Andy: Hope.

8. Brooks: The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry.
(I feel this description is fabulously true.)

9. Red: Me, I think he did it just to feel normal again. If only for a short while.

10. Red: I look back on the way I was then. A young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try and talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone and this old man is all that's left.
(For me, this part is the most emotional part of the movie. Made me cry.)

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

12. Heywood: You saying Andy's innocent? I mean, 'for real innocent'?

13. Red: These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them.

14. Red: 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.
(My favourite lines of the movie. Beautifully said.)

15. Andy: It only took me six years.
(Only...)