[Newbie] Is the text delimiter changeable?

[Ben Fairbank]

I have to process large amounts of text and the text includes numerous
apostrophes and quotation marks.  It would be very handy if I could
temporarily assign a substitute for Python's use of the caracters "
and ' to delimit text strings.  If I could use, for example, the @
character or the # character, neither of which appears in the text I
have to work with, and if I could disable the " and ' delimiters, then
my task would be greatly simplified.  I realize I can backslash escape
these characters in some circumstances, but I do not think that will
work when a user's input is a word such as "can't" or "don't."
Anyway, short of doing something truly drastic, such as recompiling
the system (which I have no intention of doing), is there a workaround
that will permit this?

Thank you,

BAF