Token Quotes

“I am glad I have found this napkin.
This was her first remembrance from the Moor,
My wayward husband hath a hundred times
Wooed me to steal it, but she so loves the token—
For he conjured her she should ever keep it—
That she reserves it evermore about her
To kiss and talk to. I’ll ha’ the work ta’en out,
And give’t Iago. What he will do with it,
Heaven knows, not I.
I nothing, but to please his fantasy.”
― Shakespeare William, Othello

“I want to see the wild country again before I die, and the Mountains; but he is still in love with the Shire, with woods and fields and little rivers.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“The little wooden bird is gone.
The last of her past life, carried away with the dead.
For months, she will keep reaching for the bird, hand drifting to her pocket the way it might to a stubborn curl, a motion born of so much habit. She cannot seem to remind her fingers it is gone, cannot seem to remind her heart, which stutters a little every time she finds the pocket empty. But, there, blooming amid the sorrow, is a terrible relief. Every moment since she left Villion, she has feared the loss of this last token.
Now that it is gone, there is a guilty gladness tucked among the grief.
This last, brittle thread to her old life has broken, and Addie has been set well, and truly and forcibly free.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“[T]he system that has created and sustained the epidemic of insecurity in this country relies on a network of tokens to placate the communities that suffer most.”
― Abdul El-Sayed, Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic