An Inspector Calls

• [the general effect is substantial and heavily comfortable, but not cosy and homelike]
• [pink and intimate ... and then ... brighter and harder]
• [the men in tails and white ties, not dinner jackets]
• [heavy-looking, rather portentous looking man]
• [a rather cold woman and her husband's social superior]
• [sheila is a pretty girl in her early twenties, very pleased with life and rather excited]
• [very much the easy well-bred man about town]
• [not quite at ease, half shy, half assertive]
• [are pleased with themselves]
• "Giving us the port, Edna? That’s right. [he pushes it towards Eric]"
• "like one of these purple-faced old men"
• "[reproachfully] Arthur, you're not supposed to say such things-"
• [half serious, half playful] (Sheila)
• "You'll have to get used to that, just as I had"
• [Eric suddenly guffaws]
• "What an expression, Sheila! Really the things you girls pick up these days!"
• "we may look forward to the time when Crofts and Birlings are no longer competing but are working together – for lower costs and higher prices"
• "Sheila’s a lucky girl – and I think you're a pretty fortunate young man too, Gerald."
• 'I only mentioned it in passing"
• "I can't drink to this, can I? When do I drink?"

  "You can drink to me."
• "Oh – it's wonderful! Look – mummy– isn't it a beauty? Oh – darling -"
• [she kisses Gerald hastily]
• "Now I really feel engaged"
• "I’m talking as a hard-headed, practical man of business"
• "Just a knighthood, of course"
• "while she doesn't object to my girl"
• "a man has to make his own way – has to look after himself – and his family too, of course"
• "like bees in a hive – community and all that nonsense"
• [he creates at once an impression of massiveness, solidity, and purposefulness]
• [dressed in a plain darkish suit of the period. he speaks carefully, weightily]
• "Burnt her inside out, of course"
• [involuntarily] "My god!"
•  [cutting through, massively]
•  [rather impatiently] "Yes, yes. Horrid business"
• [but the Inspector interposes himself between them and the photograph]
• "She was a lively good-looking girl"
• "Eva Smith was one of them, she'd had a lot to say – far too much – so she had to go"
• "it's better to ask for the earth than to take it"
• "Why shouldn't they try for higher wages? We try for the highest possible prices"
• "young women counting their pennies"