In Java, Is There a Way to Write a String Literal Without Having to Escape Quotes?

No, and I've always been annoyed by the lack of different string-literal syntaxes in Java.

Here's a trick I've used from time to time:

String myString = "using `backticks` instead of quotes".replace('`', '"');

I mainly only do something like that for a static field. Since it's static the string-replace code gets called once, upon initialization of the class. So the runtime performance penalty is practically nonexistent, and it makes the code considerably more legible.

Update Dec. 2018 (12 months later):

Raw string literals (which are on the amber list) won't make it to JDK 12.
See the criticisms here.

There might be in a future version of Java (10 or more).

See JEPS 8196004 from January 2018: ("JEP" is the "JDK Enhancement Program")

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JEP draft: Raw String Literals

Add a new kind of literal, a raw string literal, to the Java programming language.
Like the traditional string literal, a raw string literal produces a String, but does not interpret string escapes and can span multiple lines of source code.

So instead of:

Runtime.getRuntime().exec("\"C:\\Program Files\\foo\" bar");
String html = "<html>\n"
              "    <body>\n" +
              "         <p>Hello World.</p>\n" +
              "    </body>\n" +
              "</html>\n";
System.out.println("this".matches("\\w\\w\\w\\w"));

You would be able to type:

Runtime.getRuntime().exec(`"C:\Program Files\foo" bar"`);
    
String html = `<html>
                   <body>
                       <p>Hello World.</p>
                   </body>
               </html>
              `;

System.out.println("this".matches(`\w\w\w\w`));

Neat!

But it is still just a draft: it will need to posted, submitted, be a candidate, and funded, before being completed and making it into the next JDK.

Since Java 15¹ there is new feature called Text Blocks. It looks similar to what you mentioned is available in Python:

String text = """
              {
                 "property": "value",
                 "otherProperty": 12
              }
              """;

More details with examples can be found here: .

¹ Previewed in Java 13 and 14.

Simple answer: No.

For longer strings that must be escaped, I usually read them from some external resource.

you can also use StringEscapeUtils from apache commons

UPDATE: If someone is interested in some examples here is a useful link :

You could use left and/or right quotes if you don't mind the difference, they look pretty similar:

"These “double quotes” don't need nor want to be escaped"