How to correctly handle textual form inputs for SQL inserts/updates?

Hey all, I am curious how one accounts for all possible quirks that may result from textual form inputs when inserting or updating the results into the database. For instance, if a form has <input type="text"> and/or <textarea> inputs, how do you treat the results of those inputs to safely insert them into the database, to correct for 'single quotes, "double quotes, \slashes, etc etc etc. I tried using urlencode, which fixed some things, but didn't fix the problems resulting from the quotes. I tried stripslashes, which didn't seem to fix everything, either. So, in other words, I have a form with some inputs, named perhaps text1 and text2. Then, when they submit the form, I want to insert or update that entry with those values, like.. UPDATE tblStuff SET txtText1='".urlencode($text1)."', txtText2='".urlencode($text2)."'"; or something like that.. Can anyone fill me in on what the proper string formatting function or functions are to do this? Thanks a lot! -Mike Flynn