“Inanimate objects are always correct and cannot, unfortunately, be reproached with anything. I have never observed a chair shift from one foot to another, or a bed rear on its hind legs. And tables, even when they are tired, will not dare to bend their knees. I suspect that objects do this from pedagogical considerations, to reprove us constantly for our instability.”

“Inanimate objects are harmless indeed, Mr. Mortmain. But one cannot always say the same of the men who use them.”

“When I glanced at the chair, it started to shake. I’d like to think it was scared of me, but I rarely invoked that response in living things, let alone inanimate objects. ”

“Never fight an inanimate object.”

“It was like living in a new house. I saw the undersides of tables, walked through the tangle of chair legs. It would be good to be a dog, I thought. You would feel safe surrounded by all of these leggy objects that never tried to run away.”

“But life had shifted its weight from one point to another, from one leg to the other, like a silent giant in the vast shadows against the ridge, and I did not feel like the person I had been when this day began, and I did not even know if that was something to be sorry for.”