Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption

by Stephen King

A sense of his own worth, maybe, or a feeling that he would be the winner in the end… or maybe it was only a sense of freedom, even inside these goddamned gray walls.

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.

But big draft.”

He was an intelligent man, but it would have taken an extraordinarily stupid man not to smell deal all over that. Cashman was a minimum-security prison far up north in Aroostook County.

Bri FUCK HIM

In a warm place that has no memory.”

“I know that,” he said. “But it isn’t just a piece of paper that makes a man. And it isn’t just prison that breaks one, either.”

“Andrew Dufresne,” the rightside answered, and that was all it took. Everything stopped being routine right then.

But that didn’t happen until six-thirty that night, almost twelve hours after Andy had been reported missing, probably twenty hours after he had actually made his escape.

And revealed the gaping, crumbled hole in the concrete behind it.

then I’d think about Andy Dufresne heading south in his own car, dressed in a nice suit, and I’d just have to laugh. I did that fifteen days in solitary practically standing on my head. Maybe because half of me was with Andy Dufresne, Andy Dufresne who had waded in shit and came out clean on the other side, Andy Dufresne, headed for the Pacific.

McNary was where he crossed. McNary, Texas.

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

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.

Remember that hope is a good thing, Red, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. I will be hoping that this letter finds you, and finds you well. Your friend, Peter Stevens

I opened the envelope and read the letter and then I put my head in my arms and cried. With the letter there were twenty new fifty-dollar bills.

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

I hope.