PHP: Work with a large string with quotes

Question

Suppose I have a large string of HTML code. It has both double quotes and single quotes. How can I work with such a string? I want to assign it to a php var but the

Answer 1

 $var = file_get_contents('file.with.your.long.and.windy.html');

would be apparently the only sane way. PHP files are for the code.