Anne-Elisabeth had taken the music from Dr. Horvath and was looking through it. 'I see finger-cramping possibilities, William - <i>lots</i> of them,'… - John Irving

Unlike Alice, Garp was a real writer — not because he wrote more beautifully than she wrote but because he knew what every artist should know: as Garp put it, 'You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.' Even if these so-called endings and beginnings are illusions. Garp did not write faster than anyone else, or more; he simply always worked with the idea of completion in mind.

People regard art too highly, and history not enough

He had in abundance youth’s most dangerous qualities: optimism and relentlessness. He would risk everything he had to fly the plane that could carry the bomb within him.