How can I quote previous posts in my replies?

<p>this is humiliating, but I’m trying again.</p>

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<p>:) OK, that was worth it. Thanks for starting this thread- 2,000 posts later, I finally know how to do this.</p>

<p>In case there is anyone out there as confused as I was, the stumbling block for me was realizing that you will have two sets of brackets, with the word quote twice, on either side of the text you are quoting. I kept trying to put the text inside a single set of brackets. Wrong.</p>