"The escalators rose toward the mezzanine, where my office was." (3)

"... but the truth was that it was only the latest in a fairly long sequence of partially forgotten, inarticulable experiences, finally now reaching a point that I paid attention to it for the first time." (9)

"In the stapled CVS bag was a pair of new shoelaces." (9)

"I had evidently evolved two little substeps of my own that nobody had showed me." (18)

"The fact that we had independently decided to sweep our apartments on that Sunday afternoon after spending the weekend together, I took as a strong piece of evidence that we were right for each other." (21)

"These were the eight main advances I had available to bring to bear on my life on the day I sat repairing the second shoelace to wear out in two days." (24)

"So my pleasure in riding the escalator that afternoon was partly...