newbie - PHP escaping trigger happy

Just a quick Q, which I know has to be in the docs somewhere, but I haven't come across it yet- PHP automatically escaping single and double quotes... how to turn it off? I.e.- in a form text input, someone inputs love's "influence" <grows> and on the posted page I get: love\'s \"influence\" WHen I wrap that with htmlspecialchars , then I get: love\&#039;s \&quot;influence\&quot; &lt;grows&gt; What I want is: love&#039;s &quot;influence&quot; &lt;grows&gt; ...in this case anyway. Probably if I understood why PHP was escaping the quotes, then I likely would want that behavior in those circumstances it was designed for... but not now, and I don't know how to turn it off. Thanks, -Govinda