I've posted a bigger chunk of the code below. You can see that initially QUOTE was procedural- coded in place. I'm trying to learn how to use declarative design so I want to do the same thing but by using resources. It seems like I need to access the string.xml thru the @R.id tag and identify QUOTE with that string value. But I don't know enough to negotiate this. Any tips? Thanks! public class circle extends Activity { @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(new GraphicsView(this)); } static public class GraphicsView extends View { //private static final String QUOTE = "Happy Birthday to David."; private final String QUOTE = getString(R.string.quote); ..... @Override protected void onDraw(Canvas canvas) { // Drawing commands go here canvas.drawPath(circle, cPaint); canvas.drawTextOnPath(QUOTE, circle, 0, 20, tPaint);