How to type quotation marks without it modifying previous characters

If I type a space followed by a quotation mark, the quotation mark replaces the space, making it difficult to type start quotes. And if I try to place an end quote directly after another letter, it will either modify the letter if it's a vowel to become an umlaut, or it won't type the quotation mark unless I first enter a space. If I disable spacebar multi-taps, then I can get around the issue by entering two spaces before a start quote and one space before an end quote, but with spacebar multi-taps on, the only way to enter a start quote is by pressing space, entering a quote, going back, and entering another space character before the quotation mark.