"To be part of summer one must feel a part of life, but to be part of winter one must feel a part of something older than life itself....A snowscape is white of course, and of course white is the universal symbol of "purity''. But its beauty is also a matter of "pure'' form, without color and without accent. Most important of all, perhaps, it is  "pure'' after a fashion peculiar to that which is not alive, since all life is "impure'' both in the sense of being mixed and in the sense of being warm in various ways, including the sexual.''

-- Joseph Wood Krutch