From "Zero K," by Don DeLillo

This is a beautifully written book exploring existential questions in an almost mystical, oblique and futuristic way.  The narrator, Jeffrey, witnesses his father's human cryogenics operation (if that's what it's called), while also reminiscing about his late mother and how the mundane things she did defined her.  He also has a tendency to want to attach names to people he doesn't know, and to define words. He concludes his memories of his mother in this lyrical passage:

Ordinary moments make the life.  This is what she knew to be trustworthy and this is what I learned, eventually, from those years we spent together.  No leaps or falls.  I inhale the little drizzly details of the past and know who I am.  What I failed to know before is clearer now, filtered up through time, an experience belonging to no one else, not remotely, no one, anyone, ever.  I watch her use the roller to remove lint from her cloth coat.  Define coat, I tell myself.  Define time, define space.