Ok. You have a solid draft of your essay, but you need to take it over the line. You're looking for a "clinching" quotation from James Baldwin, but not one from "Sonny's Blues." So, what do you do? You search the internet of course. There are countless websites that aggregate quotations from famous and non-famous people. Here's one that I found that seemed really good at first. Big Other is a legitimate literary website. I read the "about" tab, and I trust it. The only problem, and it's a big one, is that the quotations have no attribution. We are told that James Baldwin said or wrote these things, but there's no citation. Bummer. So, what do you do? You're a detective, going on clues. One strategy is to take the quotation (or a portion of it) and plug it into Google or some other search engine. This technique might not give you all the information you need (page number, for instance), but it will point you in the right direction. It will often deliver the source: the book, essay, or interview where the quotation first appeared. Keep hunting. Try to find that source. Maybe you can dig out the page number. For instance, I found this site, AZ Quotes that sometimes (but not always) provides sources.
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