The Sirens of Titan

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

"You go up to a man, and you say, ’How are things going, Joe?’ And he says, ’Oh, fine, fine—couldn’t be better.’ And you look into his eyes, and you see things really couldn’t be much worse. When you get right down to it, everybody’s having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everybody. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much."

Not to be lonely, not to be scared—Boaz had decided that those were the important things in life. A real buddy could help more than anything.