"I don't know what they want from you half the time. What they start off liking you for, they end up hating you for. Don't like you if you're strong. Don't like you if you're weak. Hate you if you're clever, hate you if you're stupid. They don't know what they want."

"I know it's a bit cheeky but, er, I'm a cheeky young monkey!"

"Resolve is never stronger in the morning, after the night it was never weaker."

"Do you think you can recapture your youth by fuckin' it? You don't want to fuck me, you'll catch something cruel."

"You see, the thing is, Brian, that God is a hateful god. Must be, because if God is good, then why is there evil in the world? Why is there pain and hate and greed and war? Doesn't make sense. But if God is a nasty bastard, then you can say, "Why is there good in the world? Why is there love and hope and joy?" Well, let's face it. Good exists in order to be fucked up by evil. The very existence of good enables evil to flourish. Therefore, God is bad. And it doesn't matter how many past or future existences you have, because they're all gonna be riddled with grief and anguish and sickness and death. You see, Brian, God doesn't love you. God despises you. So there's no hope, and mankind is just a component of the device by which the devil creates itself. Are you with me? You see, what I'm saying, basically, is... you can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggs. And humanity is just a cracked egg. And the omelet stinks."

"Do you think that the amoeba ever dreamed that it would evolve into the frog? Of course it didn't. And when that first frog shimmied out of the water and employed its vocal chords in order to attract a mate or to retard a predator, do you think that that frog ever imagined that that incipient croak would evolve into all the languages of the world, into all the literature of the world? Of course it fucking didn't. And just as that froggy could never possibly have conceived of Shakespeare, so we can never possibly imagine our destiny."

"It's funny being inside, innit? 'Cause when you are inside, you're still actually outside, aren't ya? And then you can say, when you're outside, you're inside, because you're always inside your head."

"Frances de la Tour - Mrs. Lintott"

"Clive Merrison - The Headmaster"

"Sacha Dhawan - Akhtar"

"Samuel Barnett - Posner"

"Dominic Cooper - Dakin"

"Jamie Parker - Scripps"

"Russell Tovey - Rudge"

"Andrew Knott - Lockwood"

"Richard Griffiths - Hector"

"Stephen Campbell Moore - Irwin"

"James Corden - Timms"

"Samuel Anderson - Crowther"

"History. It's just one fucking thing after another."

"Meet The Boys Who Are Making History!"

"I was a geographer. I went to Hull."

"On enquiry I find his pupils know all the words of "When I'm Cleaning Windows". And Gracie Fields, Dorothy, Gracie Fields."

"I said it from the start: you can't polish a turd! (About Rudge)"

"One oddity: Rudge. And Christ Church of all places! Might get into Loughborough... on a bad year... otherwise all brights!"

"I want to be up there with Manchester Grammar, Haberdasher Askes, Leighton Park... or is that an open prison? No matter."

"They're good... but they're crass. They need polish... edge."

"Turning facts on their heads. It's like a game."

"The more you read, though, the more you'll see that literature is actually about losers... It's consolation. All literature is consolation."

"History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind... with a bucket."

"How do I define history? It's just one fuckin' thing after another."

"[on Hector being sacked] No more genital massage as one speed along leafy suburban roads. No more the bike's melancholy long withdrawing roar as he dropped you at the corner, your honor still intact."

"The truth was, in 1914, Germany doesn't want war. Yeah, there's an arms race, but it's Britain who's leading it. So, why does no one admit this?"

"But this is History. Distance yourselves. Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground. We don't see it, and because we don't see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past. And one of the historian's jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be... even on the Holocaust."

"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."

"I would hate to turn out boys who, in later life, would claim to have a love of literature, or speak of the lure of language, and their love of words. Words, said in a way that's somehow... Welsh."

"Remember boys: festoon your answers with gobbets, and you won't go far wrong."

"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."

"Katla: [to Jónas] She must have loved you very much to give you something so fine that you can't show it."

"I'll sew my footprints into his coat, and he'll follow me forever."

"I don't want to see. Even if I could."

"Geirlaug Sunna Þormar - Jónas"

"He's dead and she's gone, little girl. And we're all that's left. We're all that's left."

"Why are you here? You don't belong here."

"She's got two legs and a nose, she's not a goat."

"Guðrún Gísladóttir - Mother"

"Valdimar Örn Flygenring - Jóhann"

"Bryndis Petra Bragadóttir - Katla"

"Björk - Margit"

"Title card:"