Quotes from Tara Westover

I have very non-eccentric hobbies. I like to read, to have dinner with friends, and junk out on TV like everybody else.

So, I was born and raised the youngest of seven children on this really beautiful mountain in Southern Idaho. But my dad had some radical beliefs. And because of those beliefs, we were isolated. So I was never allowed to go to school or to the doctor.

It's very difficult to continue to believe in yourself and that you're a good person when the people who know you best don't.

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.

They were a very good form for me - the way a short story has to be designed in order to function, to get in everything it needs to - and they tend to be absolutely chock-a-block full of mechanisms and tricks that writers use to do the things they need to and have the effects they need to have.

I think that when memoir goes wrong, it goes wrong from too much memory, too much detail. It's about clearing all that away and just getting to the story.

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

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

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

You can miss someone every day and still be glad you don't have to see them.

I think if you're going to abuse someone, you really have to convince them of two things. First, you have to normalise what you're doing, convince them that it's not that bad. And the second thing is to convince them that they deserve it in some way.

I knew how to write like an academic, so I knew how to write academic papers and essays and things. But the things that are great for an essay are unbearable in narrative writing.

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

Learning in our family was entirely self-directed.

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. But in terms of leading a peaceful life, it is not very productive.

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 I don't think that's what it really is. I experienced it as getting access to different ideas and perspectives and using them to construct my own mind.

All my father's stories were about our mountain, our valley, our jagged little patch of Idaho.

I choose not to see my parents because I value myself - and they didn't value me or my mind.

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

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

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

My parents would say to me, 'You can teach yourself anything better than someone else can teach it to you.' That was the whole ethos of my family.