"By the light switch, there was a tack that pinned a piece of typing paper to the wall--the type itself was very faint, from long exposure to the sunlight that came through the kitchen's curtainless windows. It was some kind of list; the bottom quarter of the page had been torn away; whatever it was, it was incomplete. Homer pulled the tack out of the wall and would have crumpled the paper and tossed it toward the trash barrel if the top kine of type hadn't caught his attention.

			  CIDER HOUSE RULES

"What rules? he wondered, reading down the page. The rules were numbered.

1. Please, don't operate the grinder or the press if you've been drinking. 
2. Please don't smoke in bed or use candles.
3. Please don't go up on the roof if you've been drinking--especially
at night.
4. Please wash out the press cloths the same day or night they are used. 
5. Please remove the rotary screen immediately after you've finished
pressing and hose it clean WHEN THE POMACE IS STILL WET ON IT!
6. Please don't take bottles with you when you go up on the roof.
7. Please--even if you are very hot (or if you've been drinking)--
don't go into the cold-storage room to sleep. 
8. Please give your shopping list to the crew boss by seven o-clock
in the morning.
9. There should be no more than half a dozen people on the roof at
any one time.

"If there were a few more rules, Homer couldn't read them because the page had been ripped off. Homer handed the torn paper to Big Dot Taft.

'What's all this about the roof?' he asked Debra Pettigrew.
...
'They sit up on the roof all night, some nights,' Debra Pettigrew said.
'They get drunk up there and fall off, some nights,' Florence Hyde announced from the bedroom wing.
'They break bottles up there and cut themselves up,' said Irene Titcomb.
...
'Anyway, nobody pays attention to them rules,' Big Dot Taft said. 'Every year Olive writes them up, and every year nobody pays no attention' " (p281-282).

...

"He thought about rules. That sailor with the slashed hand had not been in a knife fight that was according to anyone's rules. In a fight with Mr. Rose, there would be Mr. Rose's own rules, whatever they were. A knife fight with Mr. Rose would be like being pecked to death by a small bird, thought Homer Well. Mr. Rose was an artist--he would take just the tip of a nose, just a button or a nipple. The real cider house rules were Mr. Rose's.

"And what were the rules at St. Cloud's? What were Larch's rules? Which rules did Dr. Larch observe, which ones did he break, or replace--and with what confidence? Clearly Candy was observing some rules, but whose? And did Wally know what the rules were? And Melony--did Melony obey any rules? wondered Homer Wells" (p379).

John Irving, The cider house rules, Bantam Books, 1985.