Key Quotations Act 1

Question 1

Hector pg.6 (Act 1)

Answer 1

I am you teacher. whatever I do in this room is a token of my trust. I am in your hands. It is a pact. Bread eaten in secret. “I have put before your life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live”

Question 2

Hector pg.9 (Act 1)

Answer 2

I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone. If I had gone to Oxford I’d probably never had worked out the difference.

Question 3

Irwin pg.20 (Act 1)

Answer 3

Hate them because these boys and girls against whom you are to compete have been groomed like thoroughbreds for this one particular race.

Question 4

Hector p.23 (Act 1)

Answer 4

You give them an education. I give them the wherewithal to resist it

Question 5

Irwin pg.25 (Act 1)

Answer 5

There’s no better way of forgetting something by than commemorating it.

Question 6

Irwin pg.26 (Act 1)

Answer 6

Truth is no more at issue in an examination than thirst at a wine-tasting or fashion at strip-tease

Question 7

Hector pg.30 (Act 1)

Answer 7

But it will, Timms. It will. And then you will have the antidote ready! Grief. Happiness. Even when you’re dyeing. We’re making your deathbeds here, boys

Question 8

Timms pg.38

Answer 8

Mr Hector’s stuff’s not meant for the exam, sir. It’s to make us more rounded human beings

Question 9

Mrs Lintott, pg.42 (Act 1)

Answer 9

One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human. One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not try and tell them

Question 10

Hector pg.48 (Act 1)

Answer 10

I count examinations even for Oxford and Cambridge as the enemy of education. Which is not to say that I don’t regard education as the enemy of education, too.

Question 11

Hector pg 48 (Act 1) - part 2

Answer 11

every answer a Christmas tree hung with the appropriate gobbets. Except that they’re learned by heart. And that is where they belong and like the other components of the heart not to be defiled by being trotted out to order

Question 12

Irwin pg.49 (Act 1)

Answer 12

Mr Hector has an old fashioned faith in the redemptive power of words. In my experience, Oxbridge examiners are on the lookout for something altogether snappier. After all, it’s not how much they know about literature. Chant the stuff till they’re are blue in the face, what good does it do?

Question 13

Hector pg.53 (Act 1)

Answer 13

The transmission of knowledge is in itself an erotic act. In the renaissance…

Question 14

Hector pg.56 (Act 1)

Answer 14

The best moments in reading are when you come across something- a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours