[Blog] Tasty Quotes Make Tasty Writing

By: Melissa Parks

My husband reads car repair manuals.

I’m grateful he has the brain to persist through that dreary copy—because when you own three used cars with hundreds of thousands of miles on each, you’re always just a mile away from a breakdown.

That type of nonfiction writing has its place. A car repair manual filled with stories would be whimsical but aggravating for types like my husband who simply want the nuts and bolts.

When I read nonfiction, though, I want it to stir me in some way.

This week I read “Spiraling in San Francisco’s Doom Loop,” an SF resident’s insider take on the apocalyptic state of the city. It was a long read, that could have lost me 1000 words in. But it didn’t.

The author humanized the stats and alarming soundbites about the city we’ve heard so often they now feel like fiction rather than reality.

“Humanizing” a nonfiction topic means bringing humanity—and all of its emotions and complexities—into the narrative.

It means letting humans tell the story. And that means using quotes.

Don't Surrender Your Voice to the Quote

Using quotes effectively is an elemental and often ignored part of the writing craft. When you surrender your writing voice to another person (the person you quote), you must be strategic.

Ask: What does their voice add that I can’t effectively summarize?

Usually, it’s a turn of phrase, a shocking statement, or a metaphor that captures the essence of an idea. The quoted language strengthens your appeal to the reader better than you could with your own words.

In the article mentioned above, the writer interviews a security guard who, over the past few years, worked at two different San Francisco retail locations.

At the first location (an Anthropologie—a women’s clothing store—which has since closed), he was ordered not to stop shoplifters. At his new location, he’s urged to intervene, because his employer’s success depends on sales.

He's on the frontlines of the urban apocalypse.

The writer summarizes most of the conversation with the guard, but she directly quotes his unique description of the city:

“It’s like a wasteland,” the guard said when I asked how San Francisco looked to him. “It’s like the only way to describe it. It’s like a video game — like made-up shit. Have you ever played Fallout?”

I shook my head.

“There’s this thing in the game called feral ghouls, and they’re like rotted. They’re like zombies.” There’s only so much pain a person can take before you disintegrate, grow paranoid, or turn numb. “I go home and play with my wife, and we’re like, ‘Ah, hahahaha, this is SF.’"

The author could have easily written, “San Francisco is a wasteland, according to one San Francisco retail security guard”—and the meaning would have been the same.

But the quote invites the reader to use their own understanding of the zombie apocalypse genre to visualize a San Francisco undone. I haven’t played Fallout, but I immediately thought of HBO’s The Last Of Us­—and I understood what the guard meant.

The details of the quote also add a layer of disbelief and horror: it’s like a video game, but you can’t turn it off when you tire of the scramble for safety.

It’s a tasty quote, which makes for tasty, craveable writing. By placing a real human with a real voice in the midst of a theoretical debate, the reader actually wants to know, “How does a city end up like this?”

A Quote Caveat

Just as important as knowing what type of quotes to include is knowing what types of quotes to exclude.

It’s easy to use blocks of quotes as a crutch. If you haven’t wrestled with an idea, a chunky quote by “an expert” can explain an idea for you.

They’re problematic, though, not just because they interrupt the flow of your writing. Block quotes also block your voice. You no longer are on top of the narrative. Someone else's narrative is on top of yours.

I like the idea of weaving quotes better than using quotes like stacking blocks.

Take a look back at the example I provided. The writer weaves in her voice—“There’s only so much pain a person can take before you disintegrate, grow paranoid, or turn numb”—between the direct quotes by the guard.

It shows she’s in control of the narrative—and ultimately, that she’s sympathetic toward the people who find themselves lost in the wasteland.

Quotes are meant to help you nuance your idea—and dish out the tastiest of writing. Writing that people savor. Writing that people remember, even in the midst of an apocalypse.