#1: I came to Shawshank when I was twenty, and I am one of the few people in our happy little family who is willing to own up to what he did. I committed murder. I put a large insurance policy on my wife, who was three years older than I was. Then I fixed the brakes of the Chevrolet coupe her father had given us as a wedding present, except I hadn’t planned on her stopping to pick up the neighbor woman and the neighbour woman’s infant son on the way down Castle Hill and into town.
#2: I’ve told you as well as I can how it is to be an institutionalized man. At first, you can’t stand those four walls, then you get so you can abide them, then you get so you can accept them … and then, as your body, and your mind, and your spirit adjust to life on an HO scale, you get to love them. You are told when to eat, when you can write letters when you can smoke. If you’re at work in the laundry or the plate shop, you’re assigned five minutes of each hour when you can go to the bathroom.
