How do I collate relevant quotations to help in my essay writing?

AQA specifies that AO1 requires your ability to maintain a critical style and to employ textual references and quotations to support your essay. As an integral skill in this study, it is important to find efficient ways of finding relevant quotes. To do this, one should first consider creating a mindmap of themes. To do this, you can ask yourself three simple questions. What problems arise in your text? What values are embedded in the story line? Does cultural and societal perspectives have an impact at all? When collecting your themes, ensure not to have more than 6, at first. This is to ensure that the themes are relevant, and therefore your quotes will be relevant too. Once this has been finished, you can read through specific chapters where these themes arise. 

In order to ensure your quotes are relevant and give you enough leverage to analyse, you must consider a few more questions. These include (but are not limited to), how does dialogue and narrative portray important literary devices such as metaphors, similies, personification etc.? How does this affect what is conveyed? Why does the writer choose to portray what they do in the way chosen? Being curious will not only help you understand the text more comprehensively, but will pave the way for interesting and individual interpretations!