$re = '/"([^"\\\\]*(?:\\\\.[^"\\\\]*)*)"|\w+|\'([^\'\\\\]*(?:\\\\.[^\'\\\\]*)*)\'/';
$str = '"The Doors" "Peace Frog" "Down The Road" Bootleg "lol noth\\"ing here" something rofl lol "wtf is going on" \'nope noe noe\' "\'\'\'" "something\'s fishy here..." \'are we "sure that this will work?"\'';
preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0);
// Print the entire match result
var_dump($matches);
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php