“The landscape was snow and green ice on broken mountains. These weren't old mountains, worn down by time and weather and full of gentle ski slopes, but young, sulky, adolescent mountains. They held secret ravines and merciless crevices. One yodel out of place would attract, not the jolly echo of a lonely goatherd, but fifty tons of express-delivery snow.”

“At the top of the mountain we are all snow leopards.”

“Fair queen, at home there is none like thee,But over the mountains is Snow-white free,With seven little dwarfs, who are strange to see;A thousand times fairer than thou is she.Queen, thou art not the fairest now;Snow-white over the mountain's browA thousand times fairer is than thou.Queen, thou art the fairest here,But not when Snow-white is near;Over the mountains still is she,Fairer a thousand times than thee.”

“It's going to snow on the mountains," she warned him."Ew, snow," I muttered to myself. It was June, for crying out loud."Wear a jacket.”

“In the mountains it's cold.Always been cold, not just this year.Jagged scarps forever snowed inWoods in the dark ravines spitting mist.Grass is still sprouting at the end of June,Leaves begin to fall in early August.And here I am, high on mountains,Peering and peering, but I can't even see the sky.”

“The snow on the distant mountains was soft and creamy, as if veiled in a faint smoke.”