An Inspector Calls – Key Quotations



An Inspector Calls – Key Quotations

Act 1

Sheila: Yes except for all last summer when you never came near me

Birling: Crofts and Birlings are working together for lower costs and higher prices

Birling: When you marry you will be marrying at a very good time….we’re in for a time of steadily increasing prosperity….some people say war is inevitable….fiddlesticks….the Titanic…absolutely unsinkable…in 1940 you may be giving a little party….There’ll be peace and prosperity everywhere

Gerald: You seem to be a nice well behaved family

Birling: We think we are

Eric: What’s the joke?....Yes I remember

Birling; ….a man has to look after himself….the way some of these cranks talk…..you’d think everybody has to look after everybody else, as if we were all mixed up together like bees in a hive – community and all that nonsense

Birling: …as it happened more than 18 months ago….obviously it has nothing whatever to do with the wretched girl’s suicide

Inspector: A chain of events

Birling: If we were all responsible for everything that happened to everyone ….it would be very awkward wouldn’t it?

Birling: ..lively, good looking – country bred…A good worker… ring leader…had a lot to say…she had to go

Inspector: ….it’s better to ask for the earth than to take it

Birling: Have you any idea what happened to her…get in to trouble? Go on the streets?...there isn’t the slightest reason why my daughter should be dragged into this unpleasant business…The girl had been causing trouble at the works I was quite justified

Sheila: Oh how horrible…You talk as if we’re responsible…It’s a rotten shame

Inspector: There are a lot of women living that sort of existence…If there weren’t the factories and warehouses wouldn’t know where to look for cheap labour. Ask your father

Sheila: But these girls aren’t cheap labour they’re people

Inspector: She enjoyed being among pretty clothes…she felt she was making a good fresh start…a customer complained

Birling: We were having a nice little family celebration here tonight. And a nasty mess you’ve made of it

Inspector: That’s more or less what I was thinking…A nice promising life here and a nasty mess somebody’s made of it

Sheila: …I expect you’ve done things you’re ashamed of

Gerald: ..I hadn’t set eyes on this girl for at least 6 months. I don’t come into this suicide business

Act 2

Gerald: I think Miss B ought to be excused any more of this questioning

Insp: And you think young women ought to be protected against unpleasant and disturbing things?

Mrs B: You seem to have made a great impression on this child Inspector…Girls of that class

Sheila: Well we didn’t think you meant Buckingham Palace

Gerald: ..It’s a favourite haunt of women of the town…quite different. She was very pretty…My God!

Mrs B: Alderman Meggarty…I must say, we are learning something tonight (After the revelation that he is a regular at the Palace Bar)

Insp:…you decided to keep her there as your mistress?

Gerald: …key of a nice set of rooms…I made her take some money…I became at once the most important person in her life…She told me she’d been happier than she’d ever been before

Insp: She went away for about 2 months. To some seaside place…just to make it last longer

Insp: Public men, Mr Birling, have responsibilities as well as privileges

Insp: She appealed to your organization for help

Mrs B: …she called herself Mrs Birling…gross impertinence….I think she had only herself to blame…I used my influence to have it refused

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