How to Use Quotes in your College Essay

by Albert L.

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”
“Fortune favors the bold.”
“But what I do I have are a particular set of skills…”

Quotes can be powerful. The last one taken from the movie Taken is so ubiquitous, it’s spawned a whole generation of memes.

Using quotes in your writing can be effective. They can summon profound ideas written by culturally and intellectually significant individuals that have already been pre-vetted into our communal lexicon. Quotes can also be used as a shorthand to evoke emotions and concepts that might be cumbersome otherwise. So, it’s not a surprise that students sometimes feel very comfortable using quotes to add punctuations of insight, emphasis, and whimsy into their college essays.

However, before you proceed with using a quote, you might want to consider whether you really need to. If you think about it, the use of a quote is by definition, using someone else’s voice. In a college essay, which is supposed to be personal, a quote potentially detracts from YOUR voice. If you are better able to articulate your thoughts, why use somebody else to do the work for you?

This is especially true if you choose an overused quote. A quote that has already been saturated in the zeitgeist can feel stale and cliched. If the quote is also too universal, it can come across as a platitude. Explaining an insight with your own thoughts with the flourishes and details of your specific life can make readers better empathize with your point of view.

So, does that mean you can’t use quotes? Not at all.

Here are some tips to use a quote effectively.

  1. Choose a quote that is less well known and isn’t too on the nose. Draw from very personal works that have direct parallels to your life. This way the use of the quote actually reveals information about you.

Quoting Yoda probably doesn’t need much explanation. However, if your quote is less known, you might need to give more context about the origins and relevance to your particular essay.

For example, if you’re obsessed with sneakers and want to be an entrepreneur, rather than using a generic quote about perseverance, pulling one from Shoe Dog by Phil Knight has extra resonance. But not everyone knows the book, so you’d want to preface how you came to be inspired by the book and that Phil Knight was the co-founder of Nike.

  1. Subvert expectations. If we read a quote and you apply the quote exactly as we read it, there’s nothing special from the use of the quote. However, if you use a commonly used quote, you can use the reader’s expectations against them, which makes them view the work in a new light with surprise.

Look at this famous quote that came out of the feminist movement in the 60s:

“Behind every great man is a great woman.”

Now look at this slight tweak:

“Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.” Jim Carrey

  1. Filter the quote through your specific perspective that adds nuance. When you do this, the quote won’t feel like regurgitating the same information. This shows thinking that is more thoughtful and allows for engagement and discussion.For example, one of my students wanted to write about how he created his own mental prison because of his extremely strict parents. As a person of faith, he didn’t quite agree with all of Jean-Paul Sartre’s takes on existentialism, but he did appreciate his views about freedom and used one of Sartre’s quotes to reflect on his own experiences.

So EssayNarwhals, use quotes sparingly when possible. Originality often trumps recycled lines that don’t feel fresh. But if you do, make sure the quote actually adds new value that doesn’t feel like dead weight in the sea.

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