“She thought of the last couple of years: the boredom, the narrowness of existence, the dearth of anything to look forward to. Yet now, in a single instant, the curtains had been whipped aside, and the windows been thrown open onto a brillant view that had been there, waiting for her, all the time. A view, moreover, laden with the most marvellous possibilities and opportunities.”

“Once, this had been the life I’d wanted. Even chosen. Now, though, I couldn’t believe that there had been a time when this kind of monotony and silence, this most narrow of existences, had been preferable. Then again, once, I’d never known anything else.”

“Every Jew was the last Jew; Tevye the Terminal, every single one. Yet, Kugel couldn't help but observe, in all that time - no last Jew. There had been a last Assyrian. There had been a last Ammonite. There had been a last Babylonian, a last Mesopotamian, a last of the Mohicans. But no last Jew.”

“Utopia was here at last: its novelty had not yet been assailed by the supreme enemy of all Utopias—boredom.”

“She thought her world had stoppedfalling apart, but she was wrong. It had simply becomeisolated, her focus narrowed to struggling not tocontinually grieve for all that had been irrevocably lost”

“...and history felt like a conjuring trick. All of this had been in plain view the entire time, but only now did the magician allow Joey to see it all.”