“The Balti had as many names for rock as the Inuit have for snow.”

“You can say that Lebanese has hundreds of lexemes for family relations. Family to the Lebanese is as snow to the Inuit.”

“The Eskimo has fifty-names for snow because it is important to them; there ought to be as many for love.”

“Stories have a unique power, David. The Inuit believe they can capture souls.”

“In northwest Alaska, kunlangeta "might be applied to a man who, for example, repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting, and, when the other men are out of the village, takes sexual advantage of many women." The Inuits tacitly assume that kunlangeta is irremediable. And so, according to Murphy, the traditional Inuit approach to such a man was to insist he go hunting, and then, in the absence of witnesses, push him off the edge of the ice.”

“A rock was sticking out of the water, jagged and pointed, covered with moss--a remnant of the Ice Age. It had withstood the rains, the snows, the frost, the heat. It was afraid of no one. It did not need redemption, it had already been redeemed.”