When life gives you lemons you say, "blah blah."
That is how i wrote the sentence. However, I am not sure about the period before the quotation mark.
the other question I have is that I am also not sure if I need to put something between the word 'lemons' and 'you'
I am probably overthinking this, but I want to write this in a nice card to someone, so I want to make sure it's written properly.
How one puts punctuation around quotes is a stylistic choice. As explained by Grammar Girl, two general rules will get you by most of the time:
In styles derived from British English, put the end comma or period outside of the quotation mark. (The duck said, 'Blah blah'.)
In styles derived from American English, put the end comma or period within the quotation mark. (The duck said, "Blah blah.")
The Purdue OWL has some more information on the American context.
Now, to your second question on putting something between "When life gives you lemons" and "you say," most people won't mind either usage. If you want to win extra points though, "When life gives you lemons" is a subordinate clause formed by using when as a conjunction. Subordinate clauses that precede the main clause are usually set off with commas.
