Elizabeth Costello

She inhabits her characters as a woman does, not a man.

Because Costello is his mother’s maiden name, and because he has never seen any reason to broadcast his connection with her, it was not known at the time of the invitation that Elizabeth Costello, the Australian writer, had a family connection in the Appleton community. He would have preferred that state of affairs to continue.”

She no longer believes very strongly in belief... Belief may be no more, in the end, than a source of energy, like a battery which one clips into an idea to make it run. As happens when one writes: believing whatever has to be believed in order to get the job done.

“His mother is entitled to her convictions, he believes. If she wants to spend her declining years making propaganda against cruelty to animals, that is her right.”

A French or English writer has thousands of years of written tradition behind him…We on the other hand are heirs to an oral tradition.

“Norma and his mother have never liked each other. Probably his mother would have chosen not to like any woman he married.”

They lost their humanity, in our eyes, because of a certain willed ignorance on their part.

He is here, with her, out of love. *He cannot imagine her getting through this trial without him at her side.”

She is not sure, as she listens to her own voice, whether she believes any longer in what she is saying.