Quotation Particle と

Quotation
plain form sentence + と + Verb*

と can be used as a quotation marking particle. Essentially, this adds quotes around the sentence it attaches to, and makes it into an adverb. There must be a verb capable of taking quotations after と (Ie, say, think, feel. read, write)

Examples

• 「かのじょはきれいだ」　といった – (someone) said ”she is pretty”. 
• 「かわいいだ」　とおもった – I thought “She’s cute”. 
• かのじょがすきだ　といった – He said he likes her. 
• ほんとうにやさしいひとだ　とかんじた – I felt that they were truly a nice person. 
• べんきょうするといって、へやにいった – They said they were going to study and went to their room. 
• きょうしつとかいてある – “classroom” is written there.
• 「漢字」は「かんじ」とよむ – 漢字 is read as かんじ.

「」is the Japanese version of quotation marks. They may be freely omitted, unless the exact wordage is important. 

Special Adverbs

As touched on above, the と particle turns a sentence into a type of adverb. Because of this, a certain class of adverbs, mostly onomatopoeia, also use と to connect to a verb.
Onomatopoeia are really really common in Japanese and far too numerous to put here. I will make a page for them later under vocabulary.

• しっかりとやってください – Do it properly
• 猫がニャーと鳴いた – The cat cried “meow”.  
• ぴかぴかと光っている – (Something) is sparkling. (Sparkly shining)