LibAnswers: MLA FAQs

The 9th edition MLA Handbook says that if you are quoting dialogue from a work:

Enclose what you are quoting from the source in double quotation marks, and enclose the dialogue (or quoted material) in single quotation marks.

If the entirety of what you are quoting from your source is a quotation or dialogue in the source itself, you can use just double quotation marks, as long as it's clear that what you are quoting from the source is a quote itself(265)

Example:

Schiffer reflected on evening mealtimes with her mother in her childhood: "Mother shook her head. 'Dinner time in the big house. You can set your watch by Walter's stomach'"(13).

If you are quoting just dialogue, you only need to use double quotation marks.

Example:

Schiffer recalled her mother's words when it came to mealtimes in her childhood: "Dinner time in the big house. You can set your watch by Walter's stomach"(13).

For more information:

https://style.mla.org/citing-dialogue-from-a-novel/

Works Cited

MLA Handbook. 9th ed., Modern Language Association of America, 2021. 

Schiffer, Vivienne. Camp Nine : A Novel, University of Arkansas Press, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/linfield/detail.action?docID=2007570.