UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi All, I love this site, it helps newbie people like me and I appreciate everyone's help!
Here is my questions.

I am trying to concatenate a single quote into a character/string from a text file for each line (lets say ABC should look like 'ABC').
I tried to use awk print command to do this, but it always gives me syntax error (i followed the awk document as it says).
Is there a unix short cut command to do this ?
thanks a lot!

Code:

> val1="ABC"        
> echo $val1
ABC
> val2="'$val1'"
> echo $val2
'ABC'
> val3="'""$val1""'"
> echo $val3
'ABC'

While what I do for val3 looks like a little over-kill, it can sometimes be easier to later debug as you just follow the pairs of quotes " " to determine what should happen.