"The expression 'snow country,' then, does not mean simply a country where snow falls. It means very specifically the part of the main island that lies west of the central mountain range. It suggests long, gray winters, tunnels under snow, dark houses with rafters black from the smoke of winter fires—and perhaps chilblains, or to the more imaginative, life divorced from time through the long snowbound months," from the Introduction.

"He felt a current pass through him, and yet the coincidence did not seem especially remarkable. Indeed he was surprised at himself for being so little surprised," Part One, p. 14

"Shimamura had come to a point where he knew he was only parading his masculine shamelessness, and yet it seemed likely enough that the woman was familiar with the failing and need not be shocked by it," Part One, p. 21.

"With her skin like white...