When you quote the words of a narrator, speaker, or character in a literary work, you should name who is speaking and provide a context for the quoted words. In the following examples, the quoted language is from Tennessee Williams’s play The Glass Menagerie and Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery.”
Laura is so completely under Amanda’s spell that when urged to make a wish on the moon, she asks, “What shall I wish for, Mother?” (1.5.140).
When a neighbor suggests that the lottery should be abandoned, Old Man Warner responds, “There’s always been a lottery” (284).