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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.”

— J. M. Coetzee Elizabeth Costello (2003)

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More quotes by J. M. Coetzee

There is nothing to link me with torturers, people who sit waiting like beetles in dark cellars.

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But why should people with nowhere to go run away from the nice life we've got here?

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

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Can't you tell the difference between a thin man and a skeleton?

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

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: J. M. Coetzee (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.