The present article investigates reporting formats in French with three quotatives: être là (‹to be there›), faire (à quelqu’un) (‹to do (to somebody)›), and se dire (‹to say to oneself›). These quotatives “introduce” almost exclusively direct quotation, which can take various shapes: sounds, complete clauses, and/or body movements. Pioneer research on French spoken language does not agree on the syntactic status of quotes: While Blanche-Benveniste (1988) argues for direct quotes being grammatically “without form”, de Cornulier (1978) does not exclude their status as complement. Investigating 12h of video recordings of everyday talk, this article illustrates that, in the case of direct reported speech/thought, the integration of bodily conduct into a grammar of spoken language may be useful. Drawing on Interactional Linguistics, I illustrate that être là, faire (à quelqu’un) and se dire are functionally distributed in interaction.