The History Boys (2006)

Richard Griffiths: Hector

Photos 

Quotes 

• Hector : The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.

• Hector : Pass the parcel. That's sometimes all you can do. Take it, feel it and pass it on. Not for me, not for you, but for someone, somewhere, one day. Pass it on, boys. That's the game I want you to learn. Pass it on.

• [about A.E. Housman] 

  Timms : Wasn't he a nancy, sir?

  Hector : Foul, festering, grubby-minded little trollop! Do not use that word!

  [Hector hits Timms on the head with an exercise book] 

  Timms : But you use it, sir!

  Hector : I do, sir, I know, but I am far gone in age and decrepitude.

• Mrs. Lintott : Actually I wouldn't have said he was sad. I would have said he was cunt-struck.

  Hector : Dorothy!

  Mrs. Lintott : I'd have thought you'd have liked that. It's a compound adjective. You like compound adjectives.

• [Timms has made a smart aleck remark] 

  Hector : Somebody hit that boy!

• [about the boys learning Brief Encounter, and Gracie Fields etc] 

  Hector : Sheer calculated silliness.

• Hector : At school you don't get parole. Good behavior just brings a longer sentence.

• Mrs. Bibby : Our lord and master, having grudgingly conceded that art may have its uses, I gather, I'm supossed, to give your Oxford and Cambridge boys a smattering of art history.

  Hector : Not my bag, Hazel. Irwin's your man.

  Tom Irwin : It's really just the icing on the cake.

  Mrs. Bibby : Is art ever anything else?

• Timms : I don't always understand poetry!

  Hector : You don't always understand it? Timms, I never understand it. But learn it now, know it now and you will understand it... whenever.

• [about telling his wife about the motorbike/boys] 

  Hector : I'm not sure she'd be interested.

• Hector : [hector during his general studies class with the boys]  i'll let you in on a little secret boys. there is no such thing as general studies. general studies is a waste of time. knowledge is not general. it is specific.

• Hector : "Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters; enough their simple loveliness for me." Keats.

  Crowther : Oh! We won't be examined on that, though, will we, sir?

  Hector : Keats?

  Crowther : Happiness.