The Cider House Rules

Jack was often a nickname for John).

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.

- Charlotte Bronte,

“Let us be thankful,” he would say, and then pause—as if he were truly wondering, What for? “Let us be thankful for what kindness we have received,” Larch would say, cautiously looking at the unwanted and abandoned around him. “Let us be thankful for Nurse Angela and for Nurse Edna,” he would add,

When there was another night pressing, Angel sat with Rose Rose on the cider house roof and told her all about the ocean: the strange tiredness one feels at the edge of the sea, the weight in the air, the haze in the middle of a summer day, the way the surf softens sharp things. He told her the whole, familiar story. How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.