How many quotes do I need and how do I organise them?

There are many ways to memorise quotes and although it will always be a slog, it can actually be the most fun and rewarding part of revision. Before memorising you've got to organise quotes. A big play or novel can be daunting to tackle but scour through the text, write down all the quotes that are the most significant or you can get the most out of. You can organise them by act/chapter or theme or character, whichever will help you. Make sure as you're going you analyse the quotes. Remember that it's focused and isolated so start with the language, get connotations of specific words and phrases before thinking about wider connections and context.Never overwhelm yourself and try to learn too many; just a 2-3 for each theme or act/chapter and know how you can expand on them linguistically and contextually and that will be the main bulk of any essay.To see if the quotes you have are effective, get an past paper question for the text you have and make one point/paragraph with 2 quotes: one to form the main analysis of the point and one to back it up at the end to round it off.Finally, remember, an essay will only be roughly 4 points long so don't take on too much, there's only 8-10 quotes per theme you should memorise and although that sounds like a lot, you will more than likely know a lot more than you think already.