An Inspector Calls : Quotes

Stage directions
 ‘Dining-room of a fairly large suburban house, belonging to a prosperous manufacturer.’
 ‘The general effect is substantial and heavily comfortable, but not cosy and homelike.’
 ‘The lighting should be pink and intimate until the Inspector arrives, then it should be
brighter and harder.’
 ‘Edna, the parlour maid.’
 ‘All five are in evening dress of the period, the men in tails and white ties, not dinner-
jackets.’
 ‘At the moment they have all had a good dinner, are celebrating a special occasion and are
pleased with themselves.’
 ‘Birling and Mrs Birling exchange bewildered and rather frightened glances’.
 The ‘sharp ring’ of the doorbell and then the phone. The phone’s sound is contrasted with
the silence.

These descriptions force the reader to become prejudice towards these characters (Priestley creates
one-dimensional characters to do this).

 Arthur Birling
‘a heavy-looking, rather portentous man in his middle fifties with fairly easy manners but rather
provincial in his speech.’

 Sybil Birling
‘His wife is about fifty, a rather cold woman and her husband’s social superior.’
Not named but referred to as ‘wife’ in the stage directions.

 Sheila Birling
‘is a pretty girl in her early twenties, very pleased with life and rather excited.’

 Gerald Croft
‘is an attractive chap about thirty, rather too manly to be dandy but very much the easy well-bred
young man-about-town.’

 Eric Birling
‘is in his early twenties, not quite at ease, half shy, half assertive.’

 Inspector Goole
‘the Inspector need not be a big man but he creates at once an impression of massiveness, solidarity
and purposefulness. He is a man in his fifties, dressed in a plain darkish suit of the period. He
speaks carefully, weightily, and has a disconcerting habit of looking hard at a person he addresses
before actually speaking.’
 An Inspector Calls : Quotes

Characters
Arthur Birling
 ‘your engagement to Sheila means a tremendous lot to me.’
 ‘you’ll hear some people say that war’s inevitable. And to that I say – fiddlesticks!’
 ‘the Titanic…every luxury – and unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable.’
 ‘There’ll be peace and prosperity and rapid progress everywhere.’
 ‘there’s a fair chance that I might find my way into the next Honours List. Just a knighthood, of
course.’
 ‘so long as we behave ourselves, don’t get into the police court or start a scandal.’
 ‘And you can promise her that we’ll try to keep out of trouble during the next few months. They both
laugh. Eric enters’
 ‘a man has to make his own way – has to look after himself – and his family too.’ (Eric comments
on this later).
 ‘a man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own – and – We hear the sharp
ring of a front door bell.’
 ‘I can’t accept any responsibility.’
 ‘We’ve been had, that’s all.’
Sybil Birling
 ‘Girls of that class –‘
 ‘He should be made an example of. If the girl’s death is due to anybody, then it’s due to him.’
Sheila Birling
 ‘(half serious, half playful) Yes – except for all last summer, when you never came near me, and I
wondered what had happened to you.’
 ‘I don’t believe I will (half playful, half serious to Gerald). So you be careful.’
 ‘But these girls aren’t cheap labour – they’re people.’
 About the Inspector ‘And I hate to think how much he knows that we don’t know yet.’
 ‘And I know I’m to blame.’
 ‘And I’m afraid you’ll say something or do something that you’ll be sorry for afterwards.’
 ‘We all started like that – so confident, so pleased with ourselves until he began asking us questions.’
 ‘No, he’s giving us the rope to hang ourselves.’
 Speaking to Gerald - ‘You and I aren’t the same people who sat down to dinner here.’
Eric Birling
 Sheila about Eric - ‘You’re squiffy.’
 ‘Because you’re not the kind of father a chap could go to when he’s in trouble’
 ‘He was our police inspector all right.’
 ‘Whoever that chap was, the fact remains that I did what I did…And the rest of you did what you did
to her.’
 ‘it’s still the same rotten story whether it’s been told to a police inspector or to somebody else.’
 ‘That doesn’t matter to me. The one I knew is dead’.
Gerald Croft
 ‘You seem to be a nice well-behaved family.’ Birling ‘We think we are.’
 Talking about Daisy Renton - ‘She was very pretty.’
 ‘We’ve no proof it was the same photograph and therefore no proof it was the same girl.’
 ‘Everything’s all right now, Sheila.’
Inspector Goole
 ‘One person and one line of inquiry at a time.’
 ‘One Eva Smith has gone - but there are millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John
Smiths still left with us, with their lives, their hopes and fears, their suffering and chance of
happiness, all intertwined with our lives, and what we think and say and do.’
 An Inspector Calls : Quotes
 ‘We don’t live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other.’
 ‘the time will soon come when, if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire
and blood and anguish.’

Themes
Socialism/Capitalism
 ‘last month, just because the miners came out in strike, there’s a lot of old talk about possible labour
trouble in the future. Don’t worry. We’ve passed the worst of it.’ – Arthur
 ‘Everything to lose and nothing to gain by war.’ - Arthur
 ‘And I say there isn’t a chance of war…it’ll make war impossible.’ – Arthur
 ‘…let’s say, in 1940…you’ll be living in a world that’ll have forgotten all these Capital versus
Labour agitations and all these silly little war scares.’ – Arthur
 ‘We can’t let these Bernard Shaws and H. G. Welles do all the talking.’ – Arthur
 ‘But the way some of these cranks talk and write now, you’d think everybody has to look after
everybody else, as if we’re all mixed up together like bees in a hive – community and all that
nonsense.’- Arthur
 ‘That fellow obviously didn’t like us. He was prejudiced from the start. Probably a Socialist or some
sort of crank – he talked like one.’ – Arthur
 ‘a man has to make his own way – has to look after himself – and his family too.’ - Arthur (Eric
brings this up later).
 ‘(Imitating Inspector in his final speech) You helped to kill her.’ – Arthur
 ‘You mustn’t try to build up a kind of wall between us and that girl. If you do, then the Inspector will
just break it down. And it’ll be all the worse when he does.’ – Sheila
 ‘Yes – and then one of those cranks walked in – the Inspector.’ – Eric (cranks refers to the writers
too)
 ‘Because what happened to her then may have determined what happened to her afterwards, and
what happened to her afterwards may have driven her to suicide. A chain of events.’ – Inspector
Goole
Gender
 ‘…clothes mean something quite different to a woman. Not just something to wear – and not not
only something to make ‘em look prettier – but – well, a sort of sign or token of their self-respect.’ –
Arthur
 ‘(sharply) Sheila, take your mother along to the drawing-room –‘ - Arthur
 ‘When you’re married you’ll realise that men with important work to do sometimes have to spend
nearly all their time and energy on their business. You’ll have to get used to that, just as I did.’ –
Sybil
 ‘I think Sheila and I had better go into the drawing-room and leave you men –‘ – Sybil
 (rising. The others rise.) – Sybil
 Ring – ‘(excited) Oh – Gerald – you’ve got it – is it the one you wanted me to have?’ – Sheila
 ‘I think Miss Birling ought to be excused any more of this questioning.’ – Gerald
 ‘I left ‘em talking about clothes again. You’d think a girl had never had any clothes before she gets
married. Women are potty about them.’ – Eric
 ‘And you think young women ought to be protected against unpleasant and disturbing things?’ –
Inspector Goole
Class
 ‘…Lady Croft – while she doesn’t object to my girl – feels you might have done better yourself
socially –‘ – Arthur
 ‘if you don’t come down sharply on some of these people, they’d soon be asking for the earth.’
-Arthur
 ‘The girl had been causing trouble in the works.’ – Arthur
 ‘As if a girl of that sort would ever refuse money!’ - Sybil
 An Inspector Calls : Quotes
Responsibility
 ‘(angrily)…There’s every excuse for what both your mother and I did – it turned out unfortunately,
that’s all –‘ – Arthur
 ‘Nothing much has happened!’ – Arthur
 ‘(jovially) But the whole thing’s different now. Come, come, you can see that, can’t you?’ – Arthur
 ‘I’m very sorry. But I think she had only herself to blame.’ – Sybil
 ‘I did nothing I’m ashamed of.’ – Sybil
 ‘Then he’d be entirely responsible.’ + ‘And he ought to be dealt with very severely - ’ – Sybil
 ‘And probably between us we killed her.’ – Sheila
 ‘The point is, you don’t seem to have learnt anything.’ – Sheila
 ‘(bitterly) I suppose we’re all nice people now.’ - Sheila
 ‘Between us we drove that girl to commit suicide.’ – Sheila
 ‘So nothing really happened. So there’s nothing to be sorry for, nothing to learn. We can all go on
behaving just as we did.’ -Sheila
 ‘You’re ready to go on in the same old way.’ - Sheila
 ‘You’re beginning to pretend now that nothing’s really happened at all.’ – Eric
 ‘(shouting) And I say the girl’s dead and we all helped to kill her – and that’s what matters –’ – Eric
 ‘In fact, I insist upon being one of the family now’ - Gerald
 Sheila - ‘She feels responsible…she’ll feel she’s entirely to blame, she’ll be alone with her
responsibility.’ – Inspector Goole
 ‘(massively) Public men, Mr Birling, have responsibilities as well as privileges.’ – Inspector Goole
Generations
 ‘And we don’t guess – we’ve had experience – and we know.’ -Arthur
 Just let me finish Eric. You’ve a lot to learn yet.’ – Arthur
 ‘(Pointing at Sheila and Eric, and laughing.) And I wish you could have seen the look on your faces
when he said that.’ – Arthur
 ‘(pointing to Eric and Sheila) Now look at the pair of them – the famous younger generation who
know it all. And they can’t even take a joke –‘ - Arthur
 ‘You seem to have made a great impression on this child, Inspector.’ - Sybil
 ‘(severely) You’re behaving like an hysterical child tonight.’ – Sybil
 ‘Really, from the way you children talk, you might be wanting to help him instead of us.’ – Sybil
 ‘They’re over-tired. In the morning they’ll be as amused as we are.’ – Sybil
 ‘If you want to know, it’s you two who are being childish – trying not to face the facts.’ - Sheila
 ‘(eagerly) That’s just what I feel, Eric. And it’s what they don’t seem to understand.’ - Sheila
 ‘And it’s the best thing any one of us has said tonight and it makes me feel a bit less ashamed of us.’
– Sheila
 ‘(tensely) I want to get out of this. It frightens me the way you talk.’ – frightens is repeated by Sheila
and then echoed by Eric later. -Sheila
 ‘But don’t forget I’m ashamed of you as well – yes both of you.’ – Eric
 ‘(coolly) We often do on the young ones. They’re more impressionable.’ – who is the ‘We’ here? –
Inspector Goole
Repeated Words/Phrases
 ‘Pleased with yourself’
 ‘Pretending’
 ‘Frightened’
 ‘Public scandal’
 ‘She was pretty’ (also a description for Sheila)