When in doubt, err on the side of caution. I agree with what you're saying. Best not to try anything tricky or "idiosyncratic" when you don't know what a publisher wants and don't have name recognition on your side.
quote marks would be totally incorrect, since they're to be used only for spoken dialog, not for dialog that's only being thought...
I believe that you should use "these" to do that. When you use 'these', you usually do so only when you are inside a quote. For example, "Mom, she said 'let's go'," I remarked. "Let's go" was heard, and they went off into the night. Hope that helped. Writewizard
ww... what you're advising to be used are the 'quote marks' i noted should NOT be used for thoughts, as they're only for spoken aloud dialog, not what a character is thinking...
