- preg_replace: documentation ( source)
<?php
$html=<<<HTML
<a href="bla">123 "this" is asd</a>
<a href="bla">this should not be captured</a>
<a href="bla">no quotes in anchor text here</a>
<a href="bla">"445 is in quotes"</a>
<a href="bla">asd "blabla" sometimes</a>
<a href="bla">Je commence à avoir mal à la tête</a>
<a href="bla">something with quotes like “blabla” is bad</a>
HTML;
echo preg_replace('~<a[^>]*>.*?["“”].*?</a>\R?~u','',$html);