characters - URGENT!!!

Hi, i have a mysql database, can anyone tell me any characters that cannot be entered into mysql (like !@#$%, etc). Also i have a string and i would like to remove html tags, characters (like ~!@#$%^&*()_+|`-=\{}[]:"<>?;',./ ) out of it, so basically i want the string to be just left with words. any help would be helpful, Thanks Selvin P.S. this is urgent i need this very quickly _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.