I am not sure if we actually cater for searching special characters like double quotes and angle brackets in KickAss, but if I do type them in the "Contains text" field, certain operations, such as ticking on / off a project, will make the characters I typed HTML encoded in the text box.

Screen-cast: https://zxu.jira-dev.com/screencasts/search.htm (Sorry, I should have used an external screen-cast sharing service but my www.screencast.com account stopped working.)