.separator (and .import) are not SQL commands but "sqlite3" commands. You can get the same effect with the following code: with open('/tmp/data.csv') as fo: reader = csv.reader(fo) cur.executemany('INSERT INTO quote VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?)'), reader) HTH -- Miki Tebeka <miki.tebeka at gmail.com> http://pythonwise.blogspot.com