act 1

• the lighting should be pink and intimate until the inspector arrives and then it should be brighter and harder-stage directions
• "its exactly the same port your father gets from him"-mr birling
• (half serious half playful) "except for all last summer when you never came near me"-sheila
• "really the things you girls pick up these days!"-mrs birling
• "working together for lower costs and higher prices"-mr birling
• "she's got a nasty temper sometimes"-Eric (in reference to sheila)
• "is it the one you wanted me to have?"-sheila
• "the germans don't want war...unsinkable absolutely unsinkable"-mr birling
• "just a knighthood of course"
• "you seem to be a nice well behaved family"-gerald
• "a man has to make his own way-has to look after himself -and his family too of course"-mr birling
• "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"-mr birling
• has a disconcerting habit of looking hard at the person he addresses before actually speaking-stage directions (inspector)
• "burnt her inside out of course"-inspector
• "wretched girls suicide"-mr birling
• "still I can't accept any responsibility"-mr birling
• "I ought to warn you he's an old friend of mine"-mr birling
• "shed had a lot to say - far too much - so she had to go"-mr birling
• "oh I wish you hadn't told me"-sheila
• "you talk as if we were responsible"-sheila
• "but these girls aren't cheap labour - they're people"-sheila
• "and then she got herself into trouble there , I suppose?"-mr birling
• "but I felt rotten about it at the time and now I feel a lot worse"-sheila
• "because I was in a furious temper"-sheila
• "at least im trying to tell the truth I expect you've done things you're ashamed of too"-sheila (to Gerald)
• "d'you mind if I give myself a drink sheila?"-gerald (drink was whisky)
• "don't say anything to the inspector...we can keep it from him"-gerald
• "why you fool he knows of course he knows and I hate to think how much he knows"-sheila
• "punish the girl just because she made you feel like that"-inspector (to sheila)
• we hear the sharp ring of a doorbell. Birling stops to listen-stage directions
• "its better to ask for the earth than to take it"-inspector