“He knows that if his father had been a different man, or his mother another women, he would have been the same. He would have lived all his years the same way. They played no part. Any combination ...”

“…to celebrate by making love the first snow of winter.”

“Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.”

“One morning as I closed the cyclone-fence gate / to begin a slow drift / down to the cookhouse on foot / (because my truck wheels were glued / in deep mud once again), / I walked straight into / th...”

“It was a morning like other mornings and yet perfect among mornings.”

“He felt that the stars had been pulverized by the sound of the black jets and that in the morning the earth would be covered with their dust like a strange snow.”

“Wolves, and stars, and snow: Those things made sense.”

“The problem with the snow is that it sticks to everything it touches. You cant get rid of it. Even when it melts away, the chill still clings to your bones.”