Don’t let the critics run away with your paper.
Instead, keep their ideas subordinated to your own and use them to support your own claims. Typically, your paragraphs should begin with your topic sentence, then provide your evidence from the text, and then (perhaps) include a comment or comments from critics. A rare exception might be when you are disagreeing with a critic. In this instance, you may wish to state the opposing idea first, and then follow up by expressing your disagreement and presenting the evidence for your point of view.
Cited passages should be integrated into your text and be attributed to their originators. For example, "Elgin Slapworthy has observed that 'Dickens remembered this period in his boyhood as both painful and humiliating' " (237). Don’t just pop in a quotation without making the context and source of the quotation clear. Attribution in the text makes the essay read more smoothly and cuts down on the amount of parenthetical documentation that must be provided.
Quotations of more than three lines should be indented and set off in the text.
Setting off indicates quotation, so quotation marks are not needed, unless you have a quotation within a quotation.
A quotation within a quotation—say you quote a critic who quotes a passage from Dorothy Sayers—this should be indicated by using single quotation marks: According to Evangeline Pink, “Sayers’ use of the line, ‘So, you’re one of them,’ echoes a statement in the trial of the infamous Madeline Smith” (299).