“What an experiment will give, to put a writer in the dark, ask her to stretch a character of the human kind with no physical characteristics attached? Will this character emerge with no prejudice in kind or one of a new kind, an organism cultured in the dark to what light may not reflect? Humanity absorbed or rudely deflected?”

“Courage. Kindness. Friendship. Character. These are the qualities that define us as human beings, and propel us, on occasion, to greatness.”

“Darkness is a defining characteristic of Rotters. But it’s worthy to remember that darkness is just that—it’s dark—and what is being concealed in the dark is not just the horrible and fearsome, it’s also the inspirational and moving. Horror means nothing without happiness; dark means nothing without light. Rotters may make you feel scared, but hopefully it will also make you simply feel. It’s that kind of book, or at least I hope it is.”

“All organisms can make the most basic distinctions--between food and not-food, danger and safety, light and dark, same-species and not-same. But only people can use language to make the highly complex categorizations of, say, animals or physical forces, or however many different kinds of quarks there are now, putting them in separate piles and naming the piles. It's how we proceed; it's how we communicate. Organization into categories is, at bottom, human.”

“The light enkindled by human kindness and love can give human life a brilliance and luster that will never be extinguished.”

“Character is what you are in the dark.”