Hi Pastor!
When you look at the post you want to quote, you will see little 'quote' marks at the end of the series of icons above it. If you click on those quote marks, you will get your message box with the full quote on it, already formatted.
If you only want to lift parts of the quote, you can cut and paste if you like and use brackets with the directions inside them for what you want the computer to do. You will see the directions next to the answer box as a blue link saying "UBB Code is enabled."
In short, if you put an 'i' (don't use the quote marks) between your brackets, with no spaces, you are telling the computer to use italics. But it won't do it unless you tell it when to close the italics. At the close, use the brackets with a '/i' between them. The slash mark says 'stop' to the computer. Use the letter 'b' for bold and '/b' to stop the bold. Use the full word 'quote' to put your quote between those lines, like this
this is probably what you are talking about, right?
and in order to close the quote, put the slash in front of the word between the brackets. Play around with the 'preview post' feature for a bit and you will see how it works.
You seem to have the emoticons down fine!
