Important Inspector Calls Quotes

The man had a smooth voice, like velvet. “I’m Detective Inspector Me. Unusual name, I know. My family were incredibly narcissistic. I’m lucky I escaped with any degree of humility at all, to be honest, but then I’ve always managed to exceed expectations. You are Kenny Dunne, are you not?” “I am.” “Just a few questions for you, Mr Dunne. Or Kenny. Can I call you Kenny? I feel we’ve become friends these past few seconds. Can I call you Kenny?” “Sure,” Kenny said, slightly baffled. “Thank you. Thank you very much. It’s important you feel comfortable around me, Kenny. It’s important we build up a level of trust. That way I’ll catch you completely unprepared when I suddenly accuse you of murder.

There’s a thing called narcissistic personality disorder. People who have an inflated sense of their own importance, a lack of empathy for others. They’re vain, they crave the power over others they think they deserve. They can be arrogant and callous. They think they’re better than everybody else and they don’t care who they trample on in their desire to get what they want.’ ‘A bit like Donald Trump, then?

We look to the so-called important figures. We value the papers left behind by Premiers, Prime Ministers, Presidents—by the most prominent witnesses to history—and forget there are other witnesses. The people who actually lived it. The First Nations. The farmers. The cooks and cleaners and salespeople. The laborers. The immigrants, the minorities.

At first glance it appeared little different from all the others. A quick in-and-out job with seventy-nine pounds in cash being taken. The thieves always took cash – it was instantly negotiable, it couldn’t be traced and it made the task of the police almost impossible. Frost sniffed. He knew Lil Carey. She was an unregistered money lender, lending out small sums of money, usually to housewives, at exorbitant interest rates. She’d never miss seventy-nine pounds. He wished the thieves had got away with more. But then he realized the ‘£’ had been scratched through by the reporting officer and the word ‘sovereigns’ added. Seventy-nine sovereigns! Frost wasn’t sure of the current rate for sovereigns, but that quantity must surely be worth much more than four thousand pounds for the gold content alone; even more if they were Victorian and in mint condition. He stuffed the report in his pocket. They would call on old mother Carey this morning without fail. The door was kicked open and Webster entered with the two cups of tea, his expression making it quite clear how much he relished being asked to perform these menial tasks. ‘Thanks, son,’ muttered Frost, who had learned that it was best to ignore the constable’s repertoire of frowns, scowls, and grimaces. He disturbed the mud of sugar with his ballpoint pen and took a sip. ‘Tastes like cat’s pee.’ He swivelled in his chair. ‘Something important we had to do this morning. For the life of me I can’t remember what it was.’ ‘The dead man in the toilets. You had to break the news.’ ‘That was it!’ exclaimed Frost. ‘Mr Dawson phoned,’ Webster told him. ‘Dawson?’ Frost screwed up his face. ‘Who’s he?’ ‘The father of the missing schoolgirl. He wanted to know if there was

Some would have called him fussy. But on matters of such importance, he knew he was merely being correct.

This is J. B. Priestley's 1945 play An Inspector Calls, and the message it contains - that we do not live alone, that we live in a society where we bear a collective responsibility towards each other - is one of the most important literary calls to activism that teenagers will encounter.