animate objects Quotes

This morning I looked at the books on my shelves and thought that they have no knowledge of my existence. They come to life because I open them and turn their pages, and yet they don't know that I am their reader.

Any object, whether animate or inanimate, will have a size. Airplanes, boats, or musical string instruments vary in size just like animals and plants, and in all cases, their size and their material construction are totally different matters even though they affect one another.

Something that has so much power must have life. Instruments have life.

I’ve named everything that I’ve ever owned. Real or inanimate, I have to give it a first and last name. Everything in my apartment comes alive at night.

Even matter called inorganic, believed to be dead, responds to irritants and gives unmistakable evidence of a living principle within. Everything that exists, organic or inorganic, animated or inert, is susceptible to stimulus from the outside.

Stones have been known to move and trees to speak.

Two characteristic marks have above all others been recognized as distinguishing that which has soul in it from that which has not - movement and sensation.

There are no inanimate objects.

Activity does not necessarily mean life. Quasars are active. And a monk meditating is not inanimate.

In a Transtromer poem, you inhabit space differently; a body becomes a thing, a mind floats, things have lives, and even non-things, even concepts, are alive.

And all along the corridor the statues and suits of armor jumped down from their plinths, and from the echoing crashes from the floors above and below, Harry knew that their fellows throughout the castle had done the same.

"Things have a life of their own," the gypsy proclaimed with a harsh accent. "It's simply a matter of waking up their souls."