Is recycling your own phrasing with a citation but without explicit quotation self-plagiarism? I have a research proposal for which I spent a lot of effort writing the introduction and background so that it was as informative and elegant as possible.  I would like to re-use this material simply because, to me, it's the best way of expressing these ideas.  To rephrase would be obviously redundant effort and I believe only detract from the quality of the writing.

Of course, I will cite my original proposal, but I am wondering whether I need to add awkward quotations of myself for almost every paragraph in my introduction or literature review sections.  This would significantly reduce the readability of those sections, which is of course the whole point of recycling the previous content.
I don't believe that self-plagiarism even applies to research proposals, so in this case, there wouldn't be an issue at all.

For papers, I will still consider quoting oneself as quite odd. If there is substantial overlap, a reference would be in order, but nothing more.