“Kugel set off, the wind in what would have been, some years ago, his hair.”

“The Kugels, Kugel hated to admit, might just have to, in the event of genocide, rely on the kindness of strangers.Mother used to say: I can name six million people who relied on the kindness of strangers.”

“His intelligence only exacerbated the guilt Kugel felt for bringing him into the world. It was one thing to have condemned a child to life, that was criminal enough, but life was a sentence more easily served by fools.”

“So desperate was Kugel for things to turn out for the best, proclaimed Professor Jove, that he couldn't stop worrying about the worst. Hope, said Professor Jove, was Solomon Kugel's greatest failing.”

“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.”

“Kugel awoke early the next morning, turning his face from the harsh rays of intruding sunlight that stretched across the room like some goddamned thing that stretches across some other goddamned thing.Why did children always draw the sun smiling? he wondered. It's a giant ball of fire, kids. It's rage and fury. Whatever it's doing, it isn't fucking smiling.”

“What’s the harm in forgetting? What does remembering do? Kugel had read that the war in the Balkans was referred to as the War of the Grandmothers; that after 50 years of peace, it was the grandmothers who reminded their offspring to hate each other, the grandmothers who reminded them of past atrocities, of indignities long gone. Never forget! shouted the grandmothers. So their grandchildren remembered, and their grandchildren died.”