Around the table is a collection of random chairs: kitchen, plastic, upholstered, swivel. On the tablecloth--a rosebud-and-bluebird motif--are plates and glasses, some already used, and cups, and cutlery. It's like a surrealist painting from the twentieth century: every object ultra solid, crisp, hard-edged, except that none of them should be here.
-- Toby (Morning paragraph 3)

Importance: In this scene, Toby examines the breakfast area during her morning routine at the beginning of the book. The importance of this quote is that it shows Toby dealing with her survivor's guilt. The mismatched chairs represent the human beings remaining after the majority of humankind has died. Like the chairs, each member of the Cobb-House is so different from each other, but they are all necessary to maintaining everyone's survival.

Once, there were too many people and not enough stuff; now it's the other way around. But physical objects have shucked their tethers--Mine, Yours, His, Hers--and have gone...
-- Toby (Morning paragraph 4)