You could introduce the quotation like this ... and solitary as an oyster. Using quotations accurately makes your essay more convincing and shows that you are able to use evidence to support ...

This is when you “drop” a quote into your essay without any form of introduction; the most common mistake is making the quote its own sentence. This is what you don’t want to do There are numerous ...

Note that while some of these are quite neutral, others allow you to imply things about the quote’s tone, similarity, contrast, and/or significance in relation to other sources or to your larger ...