House Rules Quotes

Number one house rule of pool: don't lose in your own house.

I think you're the only person who gets me. When I'm with you, the world doesn't feel like a problem I can't figure out. Please come to the dance, because you're my music.

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.

What being home-schooled has taught me, more than anything, is what a waste of a life high school is.

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.

Goodnight you princes of Maine, you kings of New England.

So long as you minded your manners and kept your weapons concealed, they let you enter and leave in peace. Those who broke the one house rule of “No Spill Blood” quickly found themselves leaving in pieces.’ (Gallagher)

Yeah, this country's founding fathers are a bunch of dead rich white men, but they did set things up so you could come and sit at the table, so don't piss in the finger bowls, all right? Thank you. In return for unfettered economic opportunity and no government death squads, try to get along with your new stepmotherland, and don't be resentful if there's a set of house rules already in place.

HOUSE RULES [at the Praetor Lupus Headquarters] No shape-shifting in the hallways. No howling. No silver. Clothing must be worn at all times. ALL TIMES. No fighting. No biting. Mark all your food before you put it in the communal refrigerator.

For Cider House Rules, I was doing a New England accent.

I won an Academy Award for 'The Cider House Rules,' playing an American.

I like to imagine a person's psyche to be like a boardinghouse full of characters. The ones who show up regularly and who habitually follow the house rules may not have met other long-term residents who stay behind closed doors, or who only appear at night. An adequate theory of character must make room for character actors, for the stuntmen and animal handlers, for all the figures who play bit parts and produce unexpected acts. They often make the show fateful, or tragic, or farcically absurd.

The House Rules Committee is perhaps the free world's outstanding bureaucratic abomination - a tiny, airless closet deep in the labyrinth of the Capitol where some of the very meanest people on earth spend their days cleaning democracy like a fish.