The Cider House Rules

by John Irving

In the bright light, he nervously picked the imaginary lint off his clothes. He remembered what the neurologists call it: carphologia.

Because abortions are illegal, women who need and want them have no choice in the matter, and you—because you know how to perform them—have no choice, either. What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman’s freedom of choice, too. If abortion was legal, a woman would have a choice—and so would you. You could feel free not to do it because someone else would. But the way it is, you’re trapped. Women are trapped. Women are victims, and so are you.

that he was not a man “about to be disgraced”; rather, he was a man about to be no longer of use. And a man of use, Wilbur Larch had thought, was all that he was born to be.

On his bedside table, between the reading lamp and the telephone, was his battered copy of David Copperfield. Homer didn’t have to open the book to know how the story began. “ ‘Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show,’ ” he recited from memory.

And the thing about being in love,” Wally said to Angel, “is that you can’t force anyone. It’s natural to want someone you love to do what you want, or what you think would be good for them, but you have to let everything happen to them. You can’t interfere with people you love any more than you’re supposed to interfere with people you don’t even know. And that’s hard,” he added, “because you often feel like interfering—you want to be the one who makes the plans.”

“You can’t protect people, kiddo,” Wally said. “All you can do is love them.”

but Dr. Gingrich was not so interested in the outcome of the situation in St. Cloud’s as he was fascinated with his secretive study of Mrs. Goodhall’s mind, in which he found such a complex broth of righteous delusion and inspired hatred.

“Nga sak kin,” he told them again. He got them all to repeat it after him. He was pleased to imagine them, later, giving this meaningless blessing to each other. It would have pleased him more if he’d ever known what the phrase actually meant. It was the perfect thing for a board of trustees to go around saying to each other: “curried fish balls.”