Use the menu below to learn how to use literary quotations.

• Incorporating Quotations into Sentences
• Punctuating and Indenting Quotations
• Emphasizing Your Ideas
• Maintaining Clarity and Readability
• Documenting Quotations

For further information you may wish to see Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Acknowledging Sources, or you
may wish take the Writing Center class entitled Literary Analysis?: No Problem!.

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As you choose quotations for a literary analysis, remember the purpose of quoting.

Your paper develops an argument about what the author of the text is doing--how the text "works."

You use quotations to support this argument; that is, you select, present, and discuss material from the text specifically to "prove" your point--to make your case--in much the same way a lawyer brings evidence before a jury.

Quoting for any other purpose is counterproductive.