import sqlite3 con = sqlite3.connect(":memory:") cur = con.cursor() cur.execute("create table people (name_last, age)") who = "Yeltsin" age = 72 # This is the qmark style: cur.execute("insert into people values (?, ?)", (who, age)) # And this is the named style: cur.execute("select * from people where name_last=:who and age=:age", {"who": who, "age": age}) print cur.fetchone()