The Cider House Rules

by John Irving

That there will always be orphans is not in the category of a problem; that is simply not to be solved—one does the best one can with that, one takes care of them. That our budget will always be too small is also not a problem; that won’t be solved, either—an orphanage goes down to the wire; by definition, that is what should happen. And it is not a problem that every woman who gets pregnant doesn’t necessarily want her baby; perhaps we can look ahead to a more enlightened time, when women will have the right to abort the birth of an unwanted child—but some women will always be uneducated, will always be confused, will always be frightened. Even in enlightened times, unwanted babies will manage to be born. “And there will always be babies, who were very much wanted, who will end up orphans—by accident, by both planned and random acts of violence, which are not problems either. Here in St. Cloud’s we would waste our limited energy and our limited imagination by regarding the sordid facts of life as if they were problems. Here

Sometimes, when we are labeled, when we are branded, our brand becomes our calling;

“History,” wrote Dr. Larch, “is composed of the smallest, often undetected mistakes.

“Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre: remorse is the poison of life.”

When time passes, it’s the people who knew you whom you want to see; they’re the ones you can talk to. When enough time passes, what’s it matter what they did to you?

What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us are wrapped up in parentheses.