Still enjoying Eggers

I find it hard to pull out quotes from this book to talk about, but I will say that his sense of humor is very similar to mine, and most of what I find funny is because of my mom. I would like to share the part on page 389 going onto 390 where he interprets (or tries to interpret) the symbolism when he meets with Sarah.

"'You look older,' she says.
Right away, I think: symbolism. I look older. It's also symbolic that, as we sit on the couch, in the dark, the light through her large windows, the weak yellow light from the streetlamp, brings her father into her face. I had only met him a few times, and never saw that strong a resemblance but now-- Now her eyes are darker. It occurs to me that her smoking, as she did when we were at the last bar, is also symbolic. That must mean something, that she says I look older, that she looks like her dead father, that she is smoking like my dead father, that we are opening our mouths on each other even though, outside of having lived similar lives, walked the same path from the parking lot to the pool at the Lake Forest Club, swum the same laps at dawn, we barely know each other. All this means something. What does this mean?--"

I am always looking for some form of symbolism that happens in my life that I can then apply them to some sort of poem. For example, while wearing an old shoe, I found it funny how shoes have "tongues" yet when they "talk to you" it's from the sole. I then started playing with sole/soul. I just liked how I could find my own little quirks in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius that help my own writing style.