How to quote in an essay? Quoting passages in books, essays, research papers and other articles depends on two things: (1) the appropriateness of the passage you want to quote and (2) the idea of your paragraph where you want to include the quotation. There are also at least two basic rules that you should follow when you are putting sentences directly from your source such as a book to your essay, for example. One, you should put the proper citation at the end of the direct quote. Two, you should always insert quotation marks at the beginning and at the end of your quote to indicate that the sentence in your paragraph is borrowed from another source.