Our goal: To learn how to integrate supporting quotes into your essays so that the quotes flow smoothly out of your own words. That way, the quotes are given a context, they become part of your argument, and they do not distract the reader from your ideas
.

Another example of using lead ins. Do not leave your quotes "naked." Make sure they are clearly connected to the argument you are trying to make.
NO: After June's humiliating piano recital,
Waverly adds insult to injury. "You aren't a genius like me" (Tan 151).
YES : After June's humiliating piano recital,
Waverly adds insult to injury by declaring,
"You aren't a genius like me" (Tan 151).

 If there is a quote within the quote you are using, then use single quotation marks to set off the inner quote.
Ex.: When Lena shows Ying-Ying around her new house, Ying-Ying complains that " the slant of the floor makes her feel as if she is ‘ running down ’ " (Tan 163).

 When your quote is longer than four lines, "block it off" from the rest of your paragraph.
Ex.: Lady Macbeth calls on supernatural powers so that she can assist in Duncan's murder:
. . . Come you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood.
Stop up th'access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose . . . . (Macbeth 1.5.47-53)
This is the quote analysis connecting the quote to your argument.
Lady Macbeth thus reveals the all-consuming nature of her ambition: she is even willing to give up her identity as a woman to get what she wants. (And the paper goes on from there.)

Courtesy the Odegaard Writing & Research Center http://www.depts.washington.edu/owrc Adapted from UW Expository Writing Program handout. Quotation Sandwich image courtesy Edward Chang