Not knowing my birthday had never seemed strange. I knew…

I have a theory that all abuse, no matter what kind of abuse it is, is foremost an assault on the mind.

— Tara Westover

I get up when I feel like getting up. That's the deal I've made with myself: I can stay in bed as long as…

— Tara Westover

Anger can be a good thing. It's a mechanism that your brain uses to get you out of situations that are bad for you.…

— Tara Westover

I felt like I needed to come to terms with the decision I'd made to let go of my family. What do you do…

— Tara Westover

Learning in our family was entirely self-directed.

— Tara Westover

I think you can change your belief, but sometimes your behavior takes a lot longer.

— Tara Westover

I'm no longer religious, but the Bible fascinates me. Hardly anyone reads it anymore, but it's got everything: it's a book of poetry, it's…

— Tara Westover

I didn't even have a birth certificate until I was 9 years old, which meant that, according to the state of Idaho and the…

— Tara Westover

There's a sense of sovereignty that comes from life on a mountain.

— Tara Westover

“You can’t be a person without a birthday, they seemed to say.”

— Tara Westover

I had to be - I was in school for probably three or four years before I began taking courses in history and political…

— Tara Westover

BYU was a really positive place for me.

— Tara Westover

For a long time, I didn't think I had the right to walk away from my family.

— Tara Westover

“This moment would define my memory of that night, and of the many nights like it, for a decade. In it I saw myself…

— Tara Westover

We think about education as a stepping stone into a higher socio-economic class, into a better job. And it does do those things. But…

— Tara Westover