Before I began The Cider House Rules, I thought I wanted to write about a father-son relationship that was closer, more conflicted, and ultimately more loving, than most. Then I began to think of a relationship between an old orphanage director and an unadoptable orphan - a kid who goes out into the world and fails and keeps coming back, so that the old guy ends up with someone he's got to keep.

The more clearly one sees this world; the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist.

Because who can describe that look that triggers the memory of loved ones? Who can anticipate the frown, the smile, or the misplaced lock of hair that sends a swift, undeniable signal from the past? Who can ever estimate the power of association, which is always strongest in moments of love and in memories of death?

She sat keenly white and still among them, a witness to everything--maybe determining nothing, possibly judging it all.

I believe in rules of behavior, and I'm quite interested in stories about the consequences of breaking those rules.

I think now that is the nature of hymns-they make us want to repeat them...they are a part of any service, and often the only part of a funeral service, that makes us feel everything is acceptable.

A writer's job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories.