An Inspector Calls Revision Quotes

Please go on," I said in the sympathetic, gruff-hearty tones of an inspector at Scotland Yard - all I needed was long underwear, a tweed suit, a walrus mustache, a British accent, a right-hand drive, socialized medicine, and a disarming manner. ~ Henry Kane

History Eraser

I got drunk and fell asleep atop the sheets but luckily i left the heater on.
And in my dreams i wrote the best song that i've ever written...can't remember how it goes.
I stayed drunk and fell awake and i was cycling on a plane and far away i heard you say you liked me.
We drifted to a party -- cool. The people went to arty school. They made their paints by mixing acid wash and lemonade

In my brain I re-arrange the letters on the page to spell your name

I found an ezra pound and made a bet that if i found a cigarette i'd drop it all and marry you.
Just then a song comes on: "you can't always get what you want" -- the rolling stones, oh woe is we, the irony!
The stones became the moss and once all inhibitions lost, the hipsters made a mission to the farm.
We drove by tractor there, the yellow straw replaced our hair, we laced the dairy river with the cream of sweet vermouth.

In my brain I re-arrange the letters on the page to spell your name

You said "we only live once" so we touched a little tongue, and instantly i wanted to...
I lost my train of thought and jumped aboard the Epping as the doors were slowly closing on the world.
I touched on and off and rubbed my arm up against yours and still the inspector inspected me.
The lady in the roof was living proof that nothing really ever is exactly as it seems.

In my brain I re-arrange the letters on the p ~ Courtney Barnett

A hand from Washington will be stretched out and placed upon every man's business; the eye of the federal inspector will be in every man's counting house ... The law will of necessity have Indus[tr]ial features, it will provide penalties, it will create complicated machinery. Under it, men will be hauled into courts distant from their homes. Heavy fines imposed by distant and unfamiliar tribunals will constantly menace the taxpayer. An army of federal inspectors, spies, and detectives will descend upon the state. ~ Richard E. Byrd

Family, it seemed, was not always a matter of who one was born to or even who one's parents were. A person's *family*, Tabitha realized, was the thing that held them up, so that life could still be illuminated in the darkest of times. A family member could be a mouse. A family member could be an Inspector that nobody would ever meet outside that pages of a novel. Depending on the circumstance, a family member might even be discovered in a person you just met. ~ Jessica Lawson

There is an incident which occurred at the examination during my first year at the high school and which is worth recording. Mr. Giles, the Educational Inspector, had come on a visit of inspection. He had set us five words to write as a spelling exercise. One of the words was 'kettle'. I had mis-spelt it. The teacher tried to prompt me with the point of his boot, but I would not be prompted. It was beyond me to see that he wanted me to copy the spelling from my neighbour's slate, for I had thought that the teacher was there to supervise us against copying. The result was that all the boys, except myself, were found to have spelt every word correctly. Only I had been stupid. The teacher tried later to bring this stupidity home to me, but without effect. I never could learn the art of 'copying'. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Sobriety isn't for cowards, Chief Inspector. Whatever you might think of an alcoholic, to get sober, really sober demands great honesty, and that demands great courage. Stopping drinking's the easy part. Then we have to face ourselves. Our demons. How many people are willing to do that? ~ Louise Penny

The president receives an inspector general's report that the Office of Personnel Management could be hacked into; they had antiquated firewalls; 23 million files have been - are in the hands of the Chinese allegedly, including, by the way, members of the press, it turns out, last week. Maybe that's the only part that's good news, so that you guys can get a feel for what it's like now to see this type of attack. ~ Jeb Bush

And, pointing a trembling finger at Bonetti-Alderighi, with an expression of indignation and a quasi-castrato voice, he launched into the climax:
Ah, so you, Mr. Commissioner, actually believed such a groundless accusation? Ah, I feel so insulted and humiliated! You're accusing me of an act - no, indeed, a crime that, if true, would warrant a severe punishment! As if I were a common idiot or gambler! That journalist must be possessed to think of such a thing!
End of climax. The inspector inwardly congratulated himself. He had managed to utter a statement using only titles of novels by Dostoyevsky. Had the comissioner noticed? Of course not! The man was ignorant as a goat! ~ Andrea Camilleri

Two hundred metres away from the cafe in Colaba police station, the duty inspector heard the rounds tumble and fizz, wondering if they were from an AK-47. ...The inspector buttonholed two constables armed with standard issue .303 bolt-action rifles. They were so antiquated that they were no longer in production in India...At most city police stations these and bamboo lathis were the only weapons available. ~ Cathy Scott-Clark

It's worth pointing out that [Herman Melville] worked in [the New York Custom House] as a deputy customs inspector between 1866 and 1885. Nineteen years, and he never got a raise - four dollars a day, six days a week. He was by then a washed-up writer, forgotten and poor. I used to find this subject heartbreaking, a waste: the greatest living American author was forced to spend his days writing tariff reports instead of novels. But now, knowing what I know about the sleaze of the New York Custom House, and the honorable if bitter decency with which Melville did his job, I have come to regard literature's loss as the republic's gain. Great writers are a dime a dozen in New York. But an honest customs inspector in the Gilded Age? Unheard of. ~ Sarah Vowell

I know that I and my office acted with the highest integrity as an independent inspector general should act. ~ Gerald Walpin

His gaze settled on her mouth. "Have you been kissed before, inspector?"
"Why?" If he wanted virgin lips, she'd claim to have serviced an army.
"If it's your first, I'll do it differently."
"You won't do it at all."
"Yes, I will. ~ Meljean Brook

If I want to read S.J. Perelman's Chicken Inspector No. 23 for the third time instead of some anguished, politically correct saga of a girl growing up in a trailer park in Kingman, Arizona, with an alcoholic mother who makes her straighten her naturally curly hair and won't let her date a Navajo boy or pursue her goal of becoming (naturally) a writer, I will. And I will laugh like a lunatic while doing it. ~ Mel White

Now, if either of you should think of something, you ring me up. And, Detective Farthering "-he shook his finger at Drew-" you and that young Dennison scamp mind you don't interfere with police business. Do all the clever thinking you want, and when you get an idea, I'll be happy to hear it. But you let the police do the investigating. Do I make myself clear?"
"Why, Inspector, I never - ~ Julianna Deering

POEM – MY AMAZING
TRAVELS
[My composition in my book Travel Memoirs with Pictures]


My very first trip I still cannot believe
Was planned and executed with such great ease.
My father, an Inspector of Schools, was such a strict man,
He gave in to my wishes when I told him of the plan.

I got my first long vacation while working as a banker
One of my co-workers wanted a travelling partner.
She visited my father and discussed the matter
Arrangements were made without any flutter.

We travelled to New York, Toronto, London, and Germany,
In each of those places, there was somebody,
To guide and protect us and to take us wonderful places,
It was a dream come true at our young ages.

We even visited Holland, which was across the Border.
To drive across from Germany was quite in order.
Memories of great times continue to linger,
I thank God for an understanding father.

That trip in 1968 was the beginning of much more,
I visited many countries afterward I am still in awe.
Barbados, Tobago, St. Maarten, and Buffalo,
Cirencester in the United Kingdom, Miami, and Orlando.

I was accompanied by my husband on many trips.
Sisters, nieces, children, grandchildren, and friends, travelled with me a bit.
Puerto Rico, Los Angeles, New York, and Hialeah,
Curacao, Caracas, Margarita, Virginia, and Anguilla.

We sailed ~ Brenda Mohammed

The company calls it 'downsizing' or 'rightsizing.' My own informal "Name the Layoff" contest produced some other euphemisms: Retroactive Hiring Freeze, Resume Revision Days, Amway Opportunity Time, and Corporation Lite. ~ Dale Dauten

On an impulse he picked up the phone and asked for the London number.
"One hour delay. Call you back," said the triumphant voice at the other end.
"Priority," said Grant. And gave his credentials.
"Oh," said the voice, disappointed but game. "Oh well, I'll see what I can do."
"On the contrary," Grant said, "I'll see what you can do," and hung up. ~ Josephine Tey

General Boykin has requested that an inspector general review this matter. And I have indicated that if that's his request, I think it's appropriate. ~ Donald Rumsfeld

Thieving was not a sheer absurdity. It was a form of human industry, perverse indeed, but still an industry exercised in an industrious world; it was work undertaken for the same reason as the work in potteries, in coal mines, in fields, in tool-grinding shops. It was labour, whose practical difference from the other forms of labour consisted in the nature of its risk, which did not lie in ankylosis, or lead poisoning, or fire-damp, or gritty dust, but in what may be briefly defined in its own special phraseology as "Seven years' hard". Chief Inspector Heat was, of course, not insensible to the gravity of moral differences. But neither were the thieves he had been looking after. They submitted to the severe sanction of a morality familiar to Chief Inspector Heat with a certain resignation. They were his fellow citizens gone wrong because of imperfect education, Chief Inspector Heat believed; but allowing for that difference, he could understand the mind of a burglar, because, as a matter of fact, the mind and the instincts of a burglar are of the same kind as the mind and the instincts of a police officer. Both recognize the same conventions, and have a working knowledge of each other's methods and of the routine of their respective trades. They understand each other, which is advantageous to both, and establishes a sort of amenity in their relations. Products of the same machine, one classed as useful and the other as noxious, they take the machine for granted in different w ~ Joseph Conrad

The houses of this country (Maharashtra) are exceedingly strong and built solely of stone and iron. The hatchet-men of the Govt. in the course of my marching do not get sufficient strength and power (i.e. time) TO DESTROY AND RAZE THE TEMPLES OF THE INFIDELS that meet the eye on the way. You should appoint an orthodox inspector (darogha) who may afterwards DESTROY THEM AT LEISURE AND DIG UP THEIR FOUNDATIONS ~ Aurangzeb

I went to bed wearing my oldest, most faded flannel shirt, the bra that had looked all right in the catalog but was obviously an escapee from a downmarket nursing home when it arrived, white cotton panties that had had pansies on them about seven hundred washings ago and were now a kind of mottled gray, and the jeans I usually wore for housecleaning or raking Yolande's garden because they were too shabby for work even if I never came out of the bakery. Food inspector arrest-on-sight jeans. Oh, and fuzzy green plaid socks. It was a cool night for summer. Relatively. I lay down on top of the bedspread. And slept through till the alarm at three-forty-five. He hadn't come. T ~ Robin McKinley

Half a thou too small," he said. "The difference between Right and Wrong. Half a thou bigger, and it'ld be Right. As it is, it's Wrong, and you can't cheat about it." He smiled again. "Too bad when God gives you the mind of an Inspector, isn't it? ~ Nevil Shute

Censor, n. An officer of certain governments, employed to supress the works of genius. Among the Romans the censor was an inspector of public morals, but the public morals of modern nations will not bear inspection. ~ Ambrose Bierce

You do have a thousand years' seniority, after all."
"A thousand years' back pay," said a dock inspector, in an awed voice. ~ Ann Leckie

[ISIS] are actively recruiting Americans. The attacker in San Bernardino was an American citizen, born and raised in this country. He was a health inspector; had a newborn child and left all that behind to kill 14 people. ~ Marco Rubio

[The Great Gatsby] is a tour de force of revision. So much so that critics, who rarely mention the edit of a book, commented on the quality of Gatsby's rewriting, not just its writing, in reviews. For H. L. Mencken, the novel had 'a careful and brilliant finish. ... There is evidence in every line of hard work and intelligent effort. ... The author wrote, tore up, rewrote, tore up again. There are pages so artfully contrived that one can no more imagine improvising them than one can imagine improvising a fugue.' ... Careful, sound, carefully written, hard effort, wrote and rewrote, artfully contrived not improvised, structure, discipline: all these terms refer, however obliquely, not to the initial act of inspiration, but to editing.
Organization and clarity do not dominate the writing process. At some point, though, a writer must pull coherence from confusion, illuminate what lives in shadow, shade what shines too brightly. Gatsby is the cat's meow case study of crossing what Michael Ondaatje calls 'that seemingly uncrossable gulf between an early draft of a book ... and a finished product' - in other words, editing. ~ Susan Bell

The inspector stood up and reached for his leather jacket. There was a whiff of aftershave. He looked every inch TV's idea of an undercover cop. I had noticed the Princess register his star quality as we arrived at his office half an hour earlier. That was good. An attractive male lead always brought out the best in our unpredictable royal performer. "If you're ready . . ." he said, heading for the door with an athlete's easy grace. His amused expression promised further treats in store.
The Princess followed him meekly. Her eyes were demurely lowered, as if to retain the image she had just seen. I knew she was enjoying herself - she was fascinated by the forbidden. ~ Patrick D. Jephson

Brittles stood at attention until Jack looked at him, then he bowed slightly. "I'm sorry to disturb you, sir, but an Inspector Swindler from Scotland Yard wishes to speak with you. Are you home?"
"Of course, I'm home, man. I'm sitting right here. ~ Lorraine Heath

His left eyebrow crept higher and higher as I told him the strange bits like the glowing letters and serpent staff. "Well, Sadie," Inspector Williams said. "You've got quite an imagination." "I'm not lying, Inspector. And I think your eyebrow is trying to escape." He tried to look at his own eyebrows, then scowled. ~ Rick Riordan

Pullum has special vitriol for Elements of Style, which he calls "E. B. White's disgusting and hypocritical revision of William Strunk's little hodgepodge of bad grammar advice and stylistic banalities" or ~ Robert Lane Greene

I wish to be
an inspector of volcanoes.
I want to study cloud formations
and memorize the wind
and learn by heart the habits of
the ponderosa pine. ~ Edward Abbey

There is nothing to guarantee the superior judgment, knowledge, and integrity of an inspector or a bureaucrat-and the deadly consequences of entrusting him with arbitrary power are obvious. ~ Alan Greenspan

When the police arrived and found no lion, no broken wall, and no convicts, and the Head behaving like a lunatic, there was an inquiry into the whole thing. And in the inquiry all sorts of things about Experiment House came out, and about ten people got expelled. After that, the Head's friends saw that the Head was no use as a Head, so they got her made an Inspector to interfere with other Heads. And when they found she wasn't much good even at that, they got her into Parliament where she lived happily ever after. ~ C.S. Lewis

The four had rented a riverside cottage and lived together there as two couples. Their vice was public, official and perfectly obvious to all. It was referred to quite naturally as something entirely normal. There were rumours about jealous scenes that took place there and about the various actresses and other famous women who frequented the little cottage near the water's edge. One neighbour, scandalized by the goings-on, alerted the police at one stage and an inspector accompanied by one of his men came to make enquiries. It was a delicate mission: there was nothing the women could be prosecuted for, least of all prostitution. The inspector was deeply puzzled and could not understand what these alleged misdemeanours could possibly be. He asked a whole lot of pointless questions, compiled a lengthy report and dismissed the charges out of hand. The joke spread as far as Saint-Germain. ~ Guy De Maupassant

As it happens" said my uncle," I intended to make an appearance at the met today anyway. Inspector Lestrade has been bumbling through another investigation, and I decided it would be best to offer my assistance before he travels too far down an incorrect deductive path- and note that I use the term deductive liberally. I don`t belive Lestrade could deduce in which direction a horse crossed the street even if he came upon a pile of its dung!"
Sherlock Holmes, The Chess queen enigma ~ Colleen Gleason

I spent an hour yesterday watching the ladies bathe. What a sight! What a hideous sight! The two sexes used to bathe together here. But now they are kept separate by means of signposts, preventive nets, and a uniformed inspector – nothing more depressingly grotesque can be imagined. However, yesterday, from the place where I was standing in the sun, with my spectacles on my nose, I could contemplate the bathing beauties at my leisure. The human race must indeed have become absolutely moronic to have lost its sense of elegance to this degree. Nothing is more pitiful than these bags in which women encase their bodies, and these oilcloth caps! What faces! What figures! And what feet! Red, scrawny, covered with corns and bunions, deformed by shoes, long as shuttles or wide as washerwomen's paddles. And in the midst of everything, scrofulous brats screaming and crying. Further off, grandmas knitting and respectable old gentlemen with gold-rimmed spectacles reading newspapers, looking up from time to time between lines to savor the vastness of the horizon with an air of approval. The whole thing made me long all afternoon to escape from Europe and go live in the Sandwich Islands or the forests of Brazil. There, at least, the beaches are not polluted by such ugly feet, by such foul-looking specimens of humanity. ~ Gustave Flaubert

The Inspector General issued six reviews and reports on actions taken based on provisions of the act. In those six reports, the IG found that not one violation of an individual's civil liberties - a total of zero - had taken place since the act was instituted. ~ Jo Bonner

The man might have died in a fit; but then the jewels are missing," mused the Inspector, "Ha! I have a theory. These flashes come upon me at times ... What do you think of this, Holmes? Sholto was, on his own confession, with his brother last night. The brother died in a fit, on which Sholto walked off the treasure! How's that?"
"On which the dead man very considerately got up and locked the door on the inside," said Holmes. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

And he calls it playing? Like, whatever happened to chess? Or cards? Or tag? ~ Cherise Sinclair

How does worship, or education, or community interaction form the kind of character that actually does what Jesus calls for - become actively engaged in being a peacemaker? ~ Glen H. Stassen

The dialectical change of mind that occurs in Buddhism is not simply the assimilation of a new philosophical basis or religious basis for viewing and interpreting experience. Rather it is the complete structural revision of that which is. ~ Frederick Lenz

Satan is the master of the ultimate double-talk and sophistry. He calls evil good and continues to confuse men with his cleverly disguised untruths. ~ Billy Graham

I don't even have voice mail or answering machines anymore. I hate the phone, and I don't want to call anybody back. If I go to hell, it will be a small closet with a telephone in it, and I will be doomed and destined for eternity to return phone calls. ~ Drew Barrymore

Despite all their surface diversity, most jokes and funny incidents have the following logical structure: Typically you lead the listener along a garden path of expectation, slowly building up tension. At the very end, you introduce an unexpected twist that entails a complete reinterpretation of all the preceding data, and moreover, it's critical that the new interpretation, though wholly unexpected, makes as much "sense" of the entire set of facts as did the originally "expected" interpretation.
In this regard, jokes have much in common with scientific creativity, with what Thomas Kuhn calls a "paradigm shift" in response to a single "anomaly." (It's probably not coincidence that many of the most creative scientists have a great sense of humor.) Of course, the anomaly in the joke is the traditional punch line and the joke is "funny" only if the listener gets the punch line by seeing in a flash of insight how a completely new interpretation of the same set of facts can incorporate the anomalous ending.
The longer and more tortuous the garden path of expectation, the "funnier" the punch line when finally delivered. ~ V.S. Ramachandran

Plants and flowers of the commonest kind can form a pleasing diary, because nothing which calls back to us the remembrance of a happy moment can be insignificant. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe