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Verb List for incorporating quotes

Two items on this page: a list of verbs to incorporate into sentences with quotes and a list of sentences including sources.

Use both as tools to help you work quotes into your own prose.

Use a verb from the following list when introducing outside sources and then commenting on them. It can also come in handy when providing context for quotes from the work your writing about.

What follows are a series of sentences which successfully incorporate an outside source. Review these to get a sense of the rhythm and cadence involved in setting up a quote and how the verb list above can help "launch" a quote. These sentences conclude with a works cited page which would be needed if these quotes were included in a single essay.

From the beginning of the text, Bradford sets the Puritans apart from others. He writes that "many became enlightened by the Word of God and had their ignorance and sins discovered" (157). Separating the "enlightened" from what seems to be the unenlightened makes a clear "us v. them" distinction.

The power of O'Connor's "The Revelation" is derived from its moral tenacity. As the writer Joyce Carol Oates observes, the story "questions the very foundations of our assumptions of the ethical life" (52). Since Mrs. Turpin's "foundation" was based upon a shallow and limited view of religion, she was ripe for a fall.

Although some critics argue that surrealism began in 1924 after the publication of the Surrealist Manifesto by Andre Breton (Kershner 52), Kafka's work, published a decade earlier, shares many qualities of surrealist art, and should be considered a precursor to the later movement.

The critics David Boxer and Cassandra Phillips also note Carver's seeming lack of style. They write that "what seems to be casual talk, virtually empty of communication, is really very deliberately and finely wrought" (99). This emphasis on the craft of his fiction -- it is "deliberately and finely wrought" -- underscores the nature of Carver's oxymoronic talent: he made conversation seem so natural that it seems to merely record what is being said.

As Dickens wrote in an essay published in the same decade as Hard Times, "It is probable that nothing will ever root out from among the common people an innate love they have for dramatic entertainment in some form or other" (305-306). That Lousia and Tom, members of the upper-class, would also find amusement in the circus shows that the differences between classes -- between people -- is not as well defined as we would think.

F. R. Leavis argues that the circus performers are symbols of "human spontaneity" (344). As such, they operate according to emotions rather than from the slow and measured intellect of Gradgrind.

Mitchell Domhnal notes that "some critics allege that to read Dickinson in any standard typographic edition is effectively to read her in translation." This suggests that the usual method of reading a poem in a textbook isn't the best way to read Dickinson .

Leypoldt Gunter argues that there are "two types of Carver stor[ies]," with one being realistic and the other more experimental (320).

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Instructions on how to set up these entries are found on the Citing Sources link under "Quick Links."

Works Cited

Boxer, David and Cassandra Phillips. From "'Will You Please

Be Quiet, Please?': Voyeurism, Dissociation, and the Art of

Raymond Carver." Iowa Review. 10 (1979): 75-90. Rprt. In

"Raymond Carver." Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed.

Sharon R. Gunton and Jean C. Stue. Vol. 22. Detroit : Gale

Research, 1982. 98-101.  Print.

Bradford, William. From Of Plymouth Plantation. The

Norton Anthology of American Literature. Vol. A. Eds. Nina

Baym, et al . New York : Norton, 2003. 157-196.  Print.

Dickens, Charles"The Amusements of the People." From

Household Words 30 March 1850.  Rprt. in Hard Times. Ed.

George Ford and Sylvere Monod.  New York: Norton, 1990.

305-307.  Print. 

Kershener, R. B. The Twentieth-Century Novel: An

Introduction. New York: Bedford Books, 1997.  Print.

Leavis, F. R. "Hard Times: An Analytic Novel." From

The Great Tradition. London: Chatto and Windus, 1948. 227-

48. Rprt. in Hard Times. Ed. George Ford and Sylvere Monod.

New York :Norton, 1990. 340-360.  Print.

Mitchell, Domhnall. "The Grammar of Ornament: Emily

Dickinson's Manuscripts and Their Meanings." Nineteenth-

Century Literature 55: 4 (March 2001): 179-204. EBSCOhost.

23 August 2001. Web. 3 December 2010.

Oates, Joyce Carol. "The Visionary Art of Flannery

O'Connor." Flannery O'Connor. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York:

Chelsea House Publishers, 1986. 43-53.  Print.