Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

Quotation, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. The words erroneously repeated.

What is a quote? A quote (cognate with quota) is a cut, a section, a slice of someone else’s orange. You suck the slice, toss the rind, skate away. Part of what you enjoy in a documentary technique is the sense of banditry. To loot someone else’s life or sentences and make off with a point of view, which is called “objective” because you can make anything into an object by treating it this way, is exciting and dangerous.

Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.

'A quotation's only a short neat way of sayin' somethin' everybody knows, like "It's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide."' (Italics in original)

Be careful — with quotations, you can damn anything.

What is a quote? A quote (cognate with quota) is a cut, a section, a slice of someone's orange. You suck the slice, toss the rind, skate away.

The use of cliché [is] the use of ready-made, prefabricated formulas designed to give those who are too lazy think the illusion of thinking...If our aim is only to say what gets by in society, our reactions will become almost completely mechanical. That's the direction cliché takes us in...it's no more a product of a conscious mind than the bark of a dog.

I say quotations are literary. They are good only when dealing with ideas, not with experience. Experience should be pure, unique.

No one in the history of the written word, not even William MacGonagall, or Spike Milligan or D. H. Lawrence, is so wide open to damaging quotation. Try this, more or less at random: 'A murderer in the moment of his murder could feel a sense of beauty and perfection as complete as the transport of a saint.' Or this: Film is a phenomenon whose resemblance to death has been ignored for too long. His italics. On every page Mailer will come up with a formulation both grandiose and crass. This is expected of him. It is also expected of the reviewer to introduce a lingering 'yet' or 'however' at some point, and say that 'somehow' Mailer's 'fearless honesty' redeems his notorious excesses. He isn't frightened of sounding outrageous; he isn't frightened of making a fool of himself; and, above all, he isn't frightened of being boring. Well, fear has its uses. Perhaps he ought to be a little less frightened of being frightened.

Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

When I want to use a quotation, I can very seldom do it properly, as the difficulty arises where to look for it in order to work it up.

Parkinson: You are, in quotes, a serious actress [makes air quote fingers]
Helen Mirren: In quotes? [...] What do you mean in quotes? How dare you.
Parkinson: Serious actress [...] as opposed to an unserious actress.

I think quotes are very dangerous things.