Desolation tries to colonize you.
-- Biologist (chapter 1 paragraph 7)

Importance: This is the biologist's first initial thought when entering Area X. It is so abandoned and human habitation so thoroughly obliterated that it makes a person want to reach out and make friends with those near enough to be called friends. It brings out the primal instinct to find others.

I had the sense that they now saw the world through a kind of veil, that they spoke to their interviewers from across a vast distance in time and space.
-- Biologist (chapter 1 paragraph 45)

Importance: The biologist is relaying the experiences of the most recent returnees from the expedition prior to their expedition. The members all reported feeling the compulsion to return home, abandoning everything at their camp. All of them seemed calm, even those who were military experts and high energy personalities. It was as if the people who returned from Area X were changed inwardly.

I liked most...
-- Biologist (chapter 2 paragraph 27)