Tara Westover

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…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— Tara Westover

I felt like we had stories about family loyalty; I didn't feel like we had stories about what to do when you…

— Tara Westover

In families like mine, there is no crime worse than telling the truth.

— Tara Westover

I didn't read much in high school, maybe because I didn't go to high school. Instead, I worked.

— Tara Westover

I do think we have collectively begun to conflate the institutions of education for education itself. Education is an individual's pursuit of…

— Tara Westover

The things about my childhood that I really loved the most, writing about those things was hard because I knew they would…

— Tara Westover

My parents would say to me, 'You can teach yourself anything better than someone else can teach it to you.' That was…

— Tara Westover

When you abuse someone, you limit their perspective, and you trap them in your view of them or your view of the…

— Tara Westover

At BYU, I discovered history, then historiography. I became fascinated with the study of historians and historical trends, with the idea that…

— Tara Westover

I think if you're going to abuse someone, you really have to convince them of two things. First, you have to normalise…

— Tara Westover

I hate the the word 'disempower,' because it seems kind of cliche, but I do think that we take people's ability to…

— Tara Westover