Dostoyevsky.

"I ask myself, 'What is hell?' And I answer thus: 'The suffering of being no longer able to love.'"

In the middle of "The Brothers Karamazov," Dostoyevsky takes a minor detour and explores the idea of hell, which he believes is a state of eternal inner torment. "I think that if there were material flames, truly people would be glad to have them," he writes, "for, as I fancy, in material torment they might forget, at least for a moment, their far more terrible spiritual torment [which is] within them."

But here's the part that breaks me. The people who suffer in hell are so wicked that, to take their torment from them would only increase their unhappiness. "For though the righteous would forgive them from paradise, seeing their torments, [...] loving them boundlessly, would only increase their torments, for they would arouse in them an even stronger flame of thirst for reciprocal, active, and grateful love, which is no longer possible."

Love deeply, people.
No wonder I can't sleep at night, reading things like this.