How do I prevent/remove/delete temp files?

The files you see are the backup file quotes.txt~ and the undo file .quotes.txt.un~.

Turn them off

You can prevent these files from being created by adding the following lines to your vimrc:

set nobackup set noundofile 

The backup file will still be created when writing a file but should not stay around. You could set nowritebackup to disable this as well although I would just leave it on.

See :help backup-table to find out which options work best for you.

Without an undofile, you will lose the ability to undo changes after closing and reopening a file. See :help undo-persistence for more information.

Put them somewhere else

You can specify another directory for the backup and undo files by setting the backupdir and undodir options. The best way, IMHO, is to create a directory in your $HOME. It will persist across reboots and only be accessible to you. For example:

set backupdir=$HOME/.vim/tmp/backup/,/tmp,. set undodir=$HOME/.vim/tmp/undo/,/tmp,. 

The example above will still use /tmp and the local directory as fallbacks.

Ignore them

If you're working with a VCS, you may want to just add the patterns to ignore them to your user configuration.