“But what is he willing to do to feel less alone? Could he destroy everything he's built and protected so diligently for intimacy? How much humiliation is he ready to endure? He doesn't know; he is afraid of discovering the answer. But increasingly, he is even more afraid that he will never have the chance to discover it at all. What does it mean to be a human if he can never have this? And yet, he reminds himself, loneliness is not hunger, or deprivation, or illness: it is not fatal. It's eradication is not owed him. He has a better life than so many people, a better life than he had ever thought he would have. To wish for companionship along with everything else he has seems a kind of greed, a gross entitlement.”