How do I chop off the beginning of a string?

I have the following strings being read in from a text file, one at a time. How can I get rid of the beginning quotes and number? So it would end up like so: => array("date"=>...... The strings are as so (the content changes, but still stays the same format): "0" => array("date"=>"7/11/2000", "author"=>"Jason Bryner", "next"=>"add") ,"2" => array("date"=>"7/12/2000", "author"=>"Me", "next"=>"add") This is what I tried: $string = strstr($string, "\""); //Yep, it's supposed to be there twice $string = strstr($string, "\""); Again, any help and suggestions would be appreciated. Jason Bryner