The principles that should govern the selection of quotations are implicit in the rules suggested in the previous subsection. Quotations should be selected because they make a point better than you could make it in your own words, or because it is particularly important to include the testimony of the particular person in your argument in his or her own words. The words you quote should be clear, should constitute “a meaningful section of text” (rule 2), and should, if possible, be striking. It is seldom worth quoting someone saying something that anyone could have said.
It is difficult to illustrate the process of selecting quotations, because each source text is different and each writer will have a different purpose in view. Nevertheless, readers who have reached this point in the present text should have acquired some familiarity with the relations between Charles Dickens and the 19th-century American public. Let us return to the example of a writing project proposed earlier. Here is a section from John Forster’s biography of Dickens in which Forster puts forward an explanation for the particular enthusiasm with which Dickens was received at the beginning of his first visit to the United States. Let us see what we might extract from it.
Unmistakably to be seen, in this the earliest of his letters, is the quite fresh and unalloyed impression first received by him at this memorable visit; and it is due, as well to himself as to the country which welcomed him, that this should be considered independently of any modification or change it afterwards underwent. Of the fervency and the universality of the welcome there could be no doubt, and as little that it sprang from feelings honourable both to giver and receiver. The sources of Dickens’s popularity in England were in truth multiplied many-fold in America. The hearty, cordial, and humane side of his genius had fascinated them quite as much; but there was also something beyond this. . . . I do not say it either to lessen or increase the value of the tribute, but to express simply what it was; and there cannot be a question that the young English author, whom by his language the Americans claimed equally for their own, was almost universally regarded by them as a kind of embodied protest against what was believed to be worst in the institutions of England, depressing and overshadowing in a social sense, and adverse to purely intellectual influences. In all their newspapers of every grade of the time, the feeling of triumph over the Mother Country in this particular is predominant. You worship titles, they said, and military heroes, and millionaires, and we of the New World want to show you, by extending the kind of homage that the Old World reserves for kings and conquerors to a young man with nothing to distinguish him but his heart and his genius, what it we think in these parts worthier of honour than birth or wealth, a title or a sword (Forster, n.d., 425).Great writers such as William Shakespeare or Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Frost, or Oscar Wilde sometimes seem to write in quotations. There are gold nuggets on every page, memorable lines in plenty. Forster was not a great writer. He is important insofar as he was a personal friend of Dickens, knew him intimately for most of his adult life, wrote the first biography after consulting Dickens about the project during the latter’s lifetime and drawing extensively on personal letters he had received from him, and published the work within four years of Dickens’s death.
He is consequently a very valuable source of information, but his words are not particularly striking. That deficiency, however, gives him more in common with the average kind of author you might be using as a source. Quotations do not choose themselves but have to be chosen. There is always, incidentally, the option of paraphrasing material that is not particularly quotable.
Probably the most striking aspect of this passage is its ending, a fine, rolling, 19th-century sentence full of noble sentiment and high-sounding words. Forster is attempting to speak as the voice of America and adopts a suitably grand style. Unfortunately, what the voice of America has to say is not really reducible into conveniently sized material suitable for quotation. You might want to extract from it the description of Dickens as “a young man with nothing to distinguish him but his heart or his genius,” but otherwise you really have to quote the sentence as a whole—and it is a rather long sentence—or set it aside. Moreover, an American voice speaking for itself would probably be of more interest than that of an Englishman draping himself in the Stars and Stripes.
The criterion of “strikingness,” then, is not particularly useful in this instance. What other criteria might we apply? The most useful are those that were used in the process of summarizing (see SUMMARIZING, page 25). If we can distinguish the main points and the key details of the passage, we will get to the heart of what the author is trying to say. That is where we should find the most quotable elements.
Forster seems to be saying four things essentially:
- At first, Dickens was genuinely glad to be in America, and Americans were genuinely glad to welcome him.
- Americans appreciated Dickens’s novels for the same reasons that the English did, but they also had additional reasons for appreciating them.
- Democratic Americans felt that Dickens shared their distaste for repressive, class-ridden English institutions.
- Consequently, Americans felt that they, rather than the English, were the people who could truly honor his genius.
If we could find phrases or sentences relating to some or all of these points (the quotations do not necessarily have to encapsulate them), we should come away with a useful haul.
The phrase “the fervency and universality of his welcome” seems to capture the essence of the first point. It is not perhaps a form of words that would occur at once to a modern writer, but it would not be difficult to fit it into a modern sentence: “Dickens’s earliest letter home shows that he was amazed and delighted by what Forster calls ‘the fervency and universality of his welcome.’ ” Continuing on, Forster’s sentence “The sources of Dickens’s popularity were multiplied many-fold in America” could be retained to exemplify the second point—with the option of extracting the core of it, “were multiplied many-fold,” if that fits in more conveniently.
There is quite a striking phrase in the passage that sums up the third point. Dickens was seen as an “embodied protest against what was believed to be worst in the institutions of England.” Here we have arrived at the center of interest in this passage. Forster’s formulation of the point is strong and neat. The rest of that sentence, however, is not particularly easy to follow, and if we need to expand on the point, we could probably do better by explaining it in our own words. This statement is definitely worth keeping.
The final point takes us into Forster’s grand conclusion, but the sentence preceding it might be worth noting down: “In all their newspapers of every grade at the time, the feeling of triumph over the Mother Country in this particular is predominant.” It is not a very neat sentence but could be made more suitable for reuse, perhaps, by the omission of some words and the insertion of ellipses.
“In all their newspapers . . ., the feeling of triumph over the Mother Country . . . is predominant.” (On the basis of the rule that quotations should not be relied on to speak for themselves, we might need to remind a reader that at that time, 1842, many British people, and perhaps some Americans, still thought of Britain as the mother country of the United States, despite the lapse of nearly 70 years from the Declaration of Independence.)
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