"Shawshank is one of those films that, every time it comes on television, I watch it — even though I own the DVD, the VHS, the Blu-ray. Every time it’s on. I can?t explain why. It’s a good script, it’s a good story; it’s a story about the human spirit and redemption… it’s beautiful. That scene when the opera plays, and everybody stops for that moment and you just hear Morgan Freeman’s voice come in, that kills me. It’s really great."

"The Shawshank Redemption. The title threw me at first. Before I went to jail, I started watching [every jail movie]. That was one of them. I was trying to write a book, and I was having trouble. You know, I didn’t have the right publisher; they just wanted a book. I hooked up with this writer, a ghost writer, and he wrote a script for me, like, overnight. It was my story, but told from a bong’s point of view, and the bong gets put in federal prison. A week later the feds come in. There was some weird cosmic thing going on."

"I guess you got to put The Shawshank Redemption in there somewhere, right? That movie was just so amazing. It’s a wild ride, because it’s very emotional. I just remember the line at the end where he’s like, “My friend.” There’s such an amazing friendship plot in that, and then there’s that line at the end that just makes you bawl your eyes out, you know? So, it’s like, get ready for an emotional… It’s very dark. He gets raped in prison. He’s getting attacked. But that story between Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, it’s just this friendship plot that runs through the movie. I just thought that was really powerful."

"Shawshank Redemption, because I love that it is about the power of the human spirit. That movie is one that I watch when I think about giving up. And that’s rare. I don’t do that anymore, but when I was first starting out in this industry, I would use that film as a metaphor for life because it was really hard and I was getting told “no” by all the studios and [wondered] if I would ever be a successful filmmaker. I would literally look and I would say, “If [Andy Dufresne] can survive and go through all that and keep his spirit then so can I, dammit [laughing].” That’s one of my favorites."