Quoting parameters manually in general is a bad idea. What if there is a mistake in escaping rules? What if escape doesn't match used version of DB? What if you just forget to escape some parameter or erroneously assumed it can't contain data requiring escaping? That all may cause SQL injection vulnerability. Also, DB can have some restrictions on SQL statement length while you need to pass large data chunk for LOB column. That's why Python DB API and most databases (Python DB API module will transparently escape parameters, if database doesn't support this, as early MySQLdb did) allow passing parameters separated from statement:
.execute(operation[,parameters])