escaping characters

[steve miller <steve@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I have a simple but perplexing problem I could use some help with.

I am storing user text input strings in mysql, and am escaping ' and  
" with addslashes.
When I pull them out and use stripslashes, I sometimes get errors  
because I don't know if they have a ' or a " in the string.

Example 1
String is: I'm cool
This works: echo "I'm cool";
This does not: echo 'I'm cool';

Example 2
String is: You are "cool"
This works: echo 'You are "cool"';
This does not: echo "You are "cool"";

Example 3
String is: I'm "cool"
This does not work: echo "I'm "cool"";
This does not work: echo 'I'm "cool"';


So, how do I output strings of unknown content?

Thanks for any guidance.

Steve