“Two thousand and seven was the year we officially entered our late twenties - the starting line of the death march to menopause.”

“Yes," Bitterblue said. "I suppose you could convert everything into minutes. Twelve times sixty is seven hundred twenty, and fifteen times fifty is seven hundred fifty. So our seven-hundred-twenty-minute half day equals its seven-hundred-fifty-minute half day. Let's see...Right now, the watch reads a time of nearly twenty-five past two. That's one hundred twenty-five total minutes, which, divided by seven hundred fifty, should equal our time in minutes divided by seven hundred twenty...so, seven hundred twenty times one hundred twenty-five is...give me a moment...ninety thousand...divided by seven hundred fifty...is one hundred twenty...which means...well! The numbers are quite neat, aren't they? It's just about two o'clock. I should go home.”

“Tillie studied her mother’s face. The face which had seen thirty-seven years of life. Twenty-one years of marriage. The birth of ten babies. The death of one.”

“O friend, for the morrow let us not worryThis moment we have now, let us not hurryWhen our time comes, we shall not tarryWith seven thousand-year-olds, our burden carry”

“In March of that year, I saw a man named Paul Barkley shot to death. It happened late at night in the parking lot of a café in Santa Rosa called Galileo’s.”

“Every seven years our bodies change, every cell. Every seven years, we disappear.”