What is the most aesthetic way to to escape a single quote within a single-quoted string in (ba)sh?

Question

In a (ba)sh script of mine, I have, for example:

MYVAR=\'Alice says: \"Hello, Bob.\" But Bob isn\'t listening.\'

This is a syntax error, since

Answer 1

No, you can't embed a single quote inside a single quoted string in Bash (or korn shell). It is a feature of the language you have chosen. Inside single quotes there are no special characters, and that includes \.

This is a variation on one of your solutions, and it is ugly:

 echo 'Alice says: "Hello, Bob." But Bob isn'\''t listening.'

gives:

Alice says: "Hello, Bob." But Bob isn't listening.

Alternatively use a different language, like Perl or Python.