How to Make Good Quotes

Step-by-Step Guide

1. 1

   Step 1: Figure out your themes.

   Brainstorm a list of the top themes you want to address with your quote.
   
   Give yourself fifteen minutes to jot down the themes or issues you want to address with your quote.
   
   You can use point form, such as single words or short phrases that indicate a theme.If you are writing a sports quote, your key themes might include: performance, athleticism, endurance, perseverance and nutrition.
   
   If you are writing a business quote, your key themes could include: competition, new markets, collaboration, opportunity and strategic planning.
   
   If you are creating a quote about charity or politics, you might be focusing on a particular issue such as homelessness, poverty, environmental degradation or health care.
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   Step 2: Write your key message.

   Consider what you want your audience to understand about the theme or issue you have identified.
   
   If there is a key message you want your audience to walk away with after reading your quote, you should write it down.
   
   At this point, you can write your communications goal as a short paragraph.For instance, you could write: “I want my teammates to understand the importance of diet and nutrition for athletic performance.
   
   Specifically, I want them to understand the importance of eating enough protein.” If you are writing about homelessness in your city, you could write: “I want my audience to understand the scope of the homelessness problem in our city.
   
   I also want them to understand that homelessness is connected to poverty and income.” , You want your quotes to be pithy, which means packing a lot of meaning into a short phrase.
   
   Your quote should be like a headline that grabs attention, rather than a long story at the back of the business section.The following examples illustrate how one can pack a lot of meaning into a short quote:
   Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl includes the line: “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”John F.
   
   Kennedy said, “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”, A vivid image can help you pack a lot of meaning into a short phrase.
   
   Good quotes are often evocative and memorable because of a particular image that the quote calls to mind.
   
   So, you could start by brainstorming various images or pictures to anchor your quote.John Berger wrote: “In Degas’s compositions with several dancers, their steps, postures and gestures often resemble the almost geometric, formal letters of an alphabet, whereas their bodies and heads are recalcitrant, sinuous and individual.”, Try using metaphors in your quotes by saying that something is like something else.
   
   If you attach a name or image to one thing that belongs to something else and do not use “like” or “as” to make the comparison, you are making a metaphor.
   
   Metaphors allow your writing to be more economical and concise.
   
   If your metaphor is apt, people will remember it as a great quote.For instance, you could write: “His eyes were moonlight.”, People may be more likely to remember your quote if it references important or surprising data.
   
   However, instead of integrating actual numbers and decimal points, you should use approximations and ratios.
   
   For instance, you could use phrases like, “twice as many” or “one third of Americans.”The CEO of the Institute for Sustainable Investing observed: “Really significantly, twice as likely to invest in a stock or a fund if sustainability is part of the value-creation thesis.”, Take a famous quote and tweak it to your own specifications and beliefs.
   
   For instance, you could find a famous quote by searching on Google.
   
   Then, use your sense of humor to revise the quote so that it speaks to the topic you are discussing.
   
   For instance, you could revise John F.
   
   Kennedy's 'Think not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country!'.
   
   Insert a different topic in place of country, such as ‘safety’.
   
   So, the revised quote would read: 'Think not what safety can do for you, but what you can do for safety!'
   
   For instance, consider making a quote about patience, kindness, good judgment or decisiveness.
   
   Then, use a simile or analogy to show a correspondence between two things that are relevant to this virtue.
   
   For instance, the act of making a decision in the game of chess is analogous to making a decision in life itself.
   
   This analogy can be the basis for a quote:'Life is like a game of chess.
   
   There are many moves to take, but you ultimately have to take one nonetheless.' Oscar Wilde used simile to create memorable lines about love: “Keep love in your heart.
   
   A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.”, Find something that relates to your life and experience.
   
   Rather than using images or metaphors that have no correspondence with your own life experience, you should try to integrate a personal perspective into the quote.
   
   Otherwise, you could just grab a quote from a book of quotes or a quotations website.
   
   If you are in high school, you could write: 'Life is a road, and high school is just a pothole'
   
   Using imagery, metaphor, simile, data references and other techniques, compose ten distinct drafts of your quote.
   
   Once you have ten drafts, you can review them to find the most memorable version.
3. 3

   Step 3: Make your quotes pithy.

4. 4

   Step 4: Use imagery to communicate meaning.

5. 5

   Step 5: Use metaphor.

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   Step 6: Integrate data into the quote.

7. 7

   Step 7: Revise a famous quote to suit your topic.

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   Step 8: Address a life virtue.

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   Step 9: Make it personal.

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    Step 10: Write ten drafts of the quote.

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