Tara Westover

Publishing a book is a very different thing than writing one.

— Tara Westover

Academic writing is such a different way of writing.

— Tara Westover

Learning in our family was entirely self-directed.

— Tara Westover

I don't really feel like I belong anywhere.

— Tara Westover

An education is not so much about making a living as making a person.

— Tara Westover

“First find out what you are capable of, then decide who you are.”

— Tara Westover

There was a lot of beauty in my childhoood.

— Tara Westover

I might just not be a big-city bug.

— Tara Westover

If you want to live a miserable life, making your life all about other people is the way to do it.

— Tara Westover

I adore Toni Morrison. I think we would all be better writers if we read more of her.

— Tara Westover

I think it's a belief that you can learn something. That's something that I really value from the upbringing I got.

— Tara Westover

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

— Tara Westover

Forgiveness isn't just the absence of anger. I think it's also the presence of self-love, when you actually begin to value yourself.

— 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

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 used to roof hay barns for my father. It's dangerous work. Writing is much better.

— Tara Westover

I think a lot of people have grown up with the idea that they can't learn things themselves. They think they need…

— 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 older brother bought textbooks and was able to teach himself enough to go to college. When I was 16, he returned…

— Tara Westover

I was 17 the first time I set foot in a classroom, but 10 years later, I would graduate from Cambridge with…

— Tara Westover

I think that when memoir goes wrong, it goes wrong from too much memory, too much detail. It's about clearing all that…

— Tara Westover

I taught myself algebra and a little grammar, and somehow I scraped a high enough score on the ACT to be admitted…

— Tara Westover

I spent my summers bottling peaches and my winters rotating supplies. When the World of Men failed, my family would continue on,…

— 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

They were a very good form for me - the way a short story has to be designed in order to function,…

— Tara Westover

Because I never attended elementary schools of any kind, I missed most of the books that were popular with other kids my…

— 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

My family was, I think, a bit more radical than most Mormons, especially on the question of gender. So in my mind,…

— Tara Westover

Anyone who grows up reading the Bible for spiritual reasons, you get accustomed to reading things that are too much for you,…

— 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

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 think, initially, my rebellion, my rebellion of going to college when my dad would have liked me to stay home and…

— 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

BYU was a really positive place for me.

— Tara Westover

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

— Tara Westover

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

— Tara Westover

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

— Tara Westover

My loyalty to my father had increased in proportion to the miles between us.

— Tara Westover

My family always spent the warm months bottling fruit for storage, which Dad said we'd need in the Days of Abomination.

— Tara Westover

When I was 17, I went to Brigham Young University. That was the first time I had set foot in a classroom.

— Tara Westover