Technically speaking, objects store their individual states in "non-static fields", that is, fields declared without the static keyword. Non-static fields are also known as instance variables because their values are unique to each instance of a class (to each object, in other words)
Instance variable,
* Can use any of the four access levels (which means they can be marked with any of the three access modifiers)
* Can be marked final
* Can be marked transient
* Cannot be marked abstract
* Cannot be marked synchronized
* Cannot be marked strictfp
* Cannot be marked native
* Cannot be marked static, because then they'd become class variables.
Instance variables have default values and allow referencing. An instance variable can only reference other instance variables that have been defined before it; otherwise it will have an illegal forward reference error.