“You do not know how the people of this country bear malice. It is the boast of some of them that they can keep a stone in their pocket seven years, turn it at the end of that time, keep it seven years longer, and hurl it and hit their mark at last.”

“It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;—it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.”

“Do you know the saying Chan Vaen edan Kote?'I tried to puzzle it out. 'Seven years... I don't know Kote''Expect disaster every seven years,' he said.”

“Not even seven thousands years of joy can justify seven days of repression.”

“Love lasts about seven years. That's how long it takes for the cells of the body to totally replace themselves.”

“His sixth year, it seemed to him, had lasted a remarkably long time and there were points at which he frankly wondered whether he would ever turn seven. But now it was the night before his birthday, and barring some cosmic disaster, the advent of some unexpected black hole into which the earth might be sucked, with the attendant reversal or suspension of time, in very few hours he would be waking up to a world in which he was numbered among the seven-year-olds.”