“If you want to be reborn,' it is written in the Tao Te Ching, 'let yourself die.' This is what I've been having trouble with, the fact that letting go can feel, at times, like a death. Someday, I know, I will lose everything. All the small deaths along the way are practice runs for the big ones, asking us to learn to be present, to grow in faith, to be grateful for what is. Life is finite and short. But this new task, figuring out how to let go of so much that has been precious -- my children, my youth, my life as I know it -- can feel like a bitter foretaste of other losses yet to come.”

“Danger, Danger running cold              Knowing but fearing just the same               Death comes and yet you don’t let go              Standing while it’s steel bands hold              Don’t walk. Don’t walk where light can not shine              You know the warning has been told              It comes for what is mine and I know it will be so.             Let go, it’s all there is that’s left. Let go your sin has no wrath.              Danger was Hell’s last request.               Let go it’s all there is that’s left. Let go your sin has no wrath.              Forgiveness wasn’t given yet. Not yet. Not yet.              No regrets. ~ Dank Walker”

“When you go through tragedy, you can either let that destroy you and you become bitter and never let it go, or you can let it make you stronger and let it make you grow. And that's what I did. My lyrics are coming from a place that I want people to relate to and feel that they're not alone.”

“I let her go. She didn't step back. “I need to either get you out of my system so I can go back to my life, or fall in love with you so much it changes my life completely. Ever since I saw you, I wanted you.” My jaw clenched. Did she know how hard that was to admit? “You break all my rules and scare me half to death.”

“It never stops hurting, the big losses never do, it becomes a part of your bones. It rips you apart and leaves you to figure out what to do next. It becomes a part of who you are and runs through your life like thread, coloring everything you are and do. It has informed how I choose to live, what I do, how I love. You will ache and you will hurt but you will be feeling, remembering how much love there was and how much there still is; death can never touch that. You heal and the wound closes, becoming a scar to remind you how precious things are and how well you were loved, how well you can love if you let yourself.”

“People like it when you tell them things, in suitable portions, in a modest, intimate tone, and they think they know you, but they do not, they know _about_ you, for what they are let in on are facts, not feelings, not what your opinion is about anything at all, not how what has happened to you and how all the decisions you have made have turned you into who you are. What they do is they fill in with their own feelings and opinions and assumptions, and they compose a new life which has precious little to do with yours, and that lets you off the hook. No-one can touch you unless you yourself want them to.”