Hidden Input and Quotes?

If I have a text box and enter data into that text box with "quotes" around some of the text... and I want to throw that text into a HTML Hidden Input Field (on my next screen for example) -- the quotes will somehow jackup or truncate that text... because HTML uses "quotes" within in the Hidden Input Field. So my question is, should I (or, really, can I) encode it? My thinking is I want to encode it with the htmlspecialchars() function... however, eventually, all the data within the Hidden Input Boxes will be stored into my mySQL database, so I'll want to decode it before I send it (restoring the quotes)... is there a way to decode the htmlspecialchars() function? Or, is there a better way to do this (*without* creating a session)? -- I want to use Hidden Input Fields. Thanks Jason jason@thinkingman.org