How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from The Shawshank Redemption.
Quote #1
RED: You could argue he'd done it to curry favor with the guards. Or maybe make a few friends among us cons. Me, I think he did it just to feel normal again, if only for a short while.
Andy's got some pretty big plans when it comes to the long-term. That doesn't mean he's entirely focused on the distant future, though. He realizes that it's just as important to hold onto hope in tiny doses as well. Like when he convinces Hadley to give his work crew a few beers, or when he makes a huge sacrifice—a little time in The Hole for the chance to blast some opera across the PA system.
Quote #2
RED: They send you here for life, and that's just what they take.
Ouch. Touché.
Red is only speaking for himself here though. Andy wouldn't have agreed with him on this point, since he was never going to let Shawshank—nor the guards, nor the warden—get the best of him. Though Red may have spoken those words, they weren't actually true. He may have thought it was all over for him at the time, but in the last fifteen minutes of the movie we discover that he has a little life left in him after all.
Quote #3
RED: 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 these walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man at Shawshank felt free.
It makes sense that Andy would have enjoyed a few minutes of the record, considering he's the one who picked it out and put it on the record player. However, was it surprising at all that Red and the other inmates, who probably weren't huge opera buffs, seemed moved by it as well? The message seems to be that only free men would be able to have that experience, and that's what Andy wanted to give them.
Would it have killed those women to sing a few words in English?