I shall have to wear the special grin I reserve for bearing really disastrous tidings. - John le Carré

Sometimes she thought Alec was right — you believed in things because you needed to; what you believed in had no value of its own, no function. What did he say: “A dog scratches where it itches. Different dogs itch in different places.

I thought it would be valuable to record the events—even if they did not take place.

[She] reports that [the company] recently donated fifty million dollars to a major U.S. teaching hospital, plus salaries and expenses for three top clinicians and six research assistants. Corruption of university Common Room affiliations is even easier: professorial chairs, biotech labs, research foundations, etc. 'Unbought scientific opinion is increasingly hard to find.'