I think "non trivial" and "slowly going insane" parts only happen if you don't have right tools, or not using POSIX-compatable system.

In python you have "shlex.quote" and "shlex.join". In bash, you have "${env@Q}". I've found those to work wonderfully to me - and I did crazy things like quote arguments, embed into shell script, quote script again for ssh, and quote 3rd time to produce executable .sh file.

In other languages.. yeah, you are going to have bad time. Especially on Windows, where I'd just give up and move to WSL.