Hi John,

Interesting use case, I definitely see the utility.  I think that blocks
may be an appropriate solution, for example if you enclose your notes in
"notes" blocks, then it should be easy to control whether or not they
are exported...

Using the following code, you can control whether notes enclosed in
"notes" blcks will be exported by changing the value of the
*export-my-notes* variable, when it is nil your notes will not be
exported, when t they will be exported as quoted text.

#+begin_src emacs-lisp
  (defvar *export-my-notes* nil)

  (defun org-exp-block-process-notes (body &rest headers)
    (if *export-my-notes*
        (format "\n#+begin_quote\n%s\n#+end_quote\n" body)
        ""))

  (org-export-blocks-add-block '(notes org-exp-block-process-notes nil))
#+end_src

Hope this Helps -- Eric

This works for me with the attached Org-mode file.