An Inspector Calls

• MR BIRLING: '"I'm talking as a hard-headed practical man of business"'
• MR BIRLING: '"you'll hear some people say war is Inevitable … fiddlesticks!"'
• MR BIRLING: '"The Titanic – she sails next week…and unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable."'
• MR BIRLING: '"I gather there's a very good chance of a knighthood"'
• MR BIRLING: '"A man has to make his own way – has to look after himself – and his family too, of course"'
• MR BIRLING: '"(rather impatiently) Horrid business. But I don't understand why you should come here."'
• MR BIRLING: '"you'd think everybody has to look after everybody else, as if we were all mixed up like bees in a hive – community and all that nonsense."'
• MR BIRLING: '"I was an alderman for years – and Lord Mayor two years ago – and I'm still on the Bench – so I know the Brumley police offers pretty well"'
• MR BIRLING: '"there's every excuse for what your mother and I did"'
• MR BIRLING: '"Probably a Socialist or some sort of crank"'
• MR BIRLING: '"Now look at the pair of them- the famous younger generation who know it all. And they can't even take a joke-"'
• MRS BIRLING

  About fifty, a rather cold woman and her husband's social superior
• MRS BIRLING: '"girls of that class"'
• MRS BIRLING: ''you know, my husband was Lord Mayor only two years ago and that he's still a magistrate''
• MRS BIRLING: ''I'm very sorry. But I think she only had herself to blame''
• MRS BIRLING: '"I've done nothing wrong – and you know it."'
• MRS BIRLING: '"Go and look for the father of the child. It's his responsibility."'
• MRS BIRLING: '"She was giving herself ridiculous airs…claiming elaborate fine feelings…that were simply absurd in a girl in her position."'
• MRS BIRLING: '"As if a girl of that sort would ever refuse money!"'
• MRS BIRLING: '"I'm sorry she should have come to such a horrible end. But I accept no blame at all"'
• MRS BIRLING: '"he ought to be dealt with very severely-…make sure that he's compelled to confess in public his responsibility"'
• MRS BIRLING: ''he certainly didn't make me confess – I had done no more than my duty''
• SHEILA BIRLING

  A pretty girl in her early twenties, very pleased with life and rather excited
• SHEILA BIRLING: '"Yes, go on, Mummy"'
• SHEILA BIRLING: '"(rather distressed) I can't help thinking about this girl- destroying herself so horribly- and I've been so happy tonight. Oh I wish you hadn't told me."'
• SHEILA BIRLING: '"But these girls aren't cheap labour- they're people."'
• SHEILA BIRLING: '"She was a very pretty girl…that didn't make it any better."'
• SHEILA BIRLING: '"I went to the manager and told him this girl had been very impertinent – and – and - "'
• SHEILA BIRLING: '"And if I could help her now, I would-"'
• SHEILA BIRLING: '"I'll never, never do it again to anybody…I feel now I can never go there again"'
• SHEILA BIRLING: '"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."'
• SHEILA BIRLING: '"You mustn't try to build up a kind of wall between us and that girl. If you do the Inspector will just break it down. And it'll be all the worse when he does"'
• SHEILA BIRLING: '"No, he's giving us the rope- so that we'll hang ourselves" Bitterly "I suppose we're all nice people now" "He inspected us all right." "It frightens me the way you talk"'
• ERIC BIRLING

  In his early twenties, not quite at ease, half shy, half assertive
• ERIC BIRLING: '"Why shouldn't they try for higher wages? We try for the highest possible prices"'
• ERIC BIRLING: '"it isn't as if you can go and work somewhere else."'
• ERIC BIRLING: '"He could have kept her on instead of throwing her out. I call it tough luck." "I'd have let her stay"'
• ERIC BIRLING: '"Well I was in that state when a chap easily turns nasty- and I threatened to make a row"'
• ERIC BIRLING: '"And that's when it happened. And I don't even remember- that's the hellish thing."'
• ERIC BIRLING: '"I wasn't in love with her or anything- but I liked her- she was pretty and a good sport-"'