Sheila Birling

• ‘Oh-Gerald- you've got it- is it the one you wanted me to have?’ 
• ‘Look-Mummy- isn't it a beauty?’ 
• ‘Now I really feel engaged.’ 
•  ‘What was she like? Quite young?’ .... ‘Pretty?’ 
• ‘But these girls aren’t cheap labour –they're people’ 
• (Miserably) ‘So I’m really responsible?’ 
• ‘How could I know what would happen afterwards?’ 
• ‘I’ll never, never do it again to anybody’ 
• ‘Why - you fool – he knows. Of course he knows. And I hate to think how much he knows that we don’t know yet. You’ll see. You’ll see’ 
• ‘He means I’m getting hysterical now’ ‘And are you?’ ‘Probably.’ 
• ‘You mustn’t try to build up a wall between us and that girl’ 
• ‘We really must stop these silly pretences.’ ‘We really must stop these silly pretences.’ 
• ‘No, he’s giving us the rope – so that we’ll hang ourselves’ 
• ‘I’m not a child, don’t forget. I’ve a right to know’ 
• ‘Mother, I think it was cruel and vile’ 
• ‘I behaved badly too. I know I did. I’m ashamed of it. But now you’re beginning all over again to pretend that nothing much has happened-’ 
• ‘The point is, you don’t seem to have learnt anything’ 
• ‘It’s you two who are being childish – trying not to face the facts.’ 
• ‘Between us we drove that girl to commit suicide’ 
• ‘You’re ready to go on in the same old way’