This article differentiates utterer commitments when producing Direct Discourse. Such commitments are evaluated against a general theory of quotation. This kind of evaluation is routinely disregarded in the literature on quotatives. ’Depiction’ theory is claimed to supply the most fit framework. It adopts a central pragmatic commitment to selective aspects of a targeted conduct. Lexical commitments derive from the choice of a quotative expression. Pragmatic commitment inherent in quoting act trumps the lexical commitments. Hypotheses are tested on a corpus of occurrences of DD in French.