AustLit

'The only time I heard Shirley Hazzard use the word ‘hate’ during the thirteen years I knew her was one night in Rome when I walked her back to the Hassler Hotel after a dinner at Otello on Via della Croce. (For half a century, both with and without her husband Francis Steegmuller, she stayed in the same room at the Hassler Hotel whenever she was in Rome, and only occasionally did she and I ever dine at a restaurant other than Otello when we got together in Rome). I mentioned something about a place that had changed. She stopped in her tracks, put her hand on my arm, and declared: ‘I hate change.’' (Introduction)