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" Although my family attended the same church as everyone in our town, our religion was not the same. I could stand with my family or with the gentiles... but there was no foothold in between. "
Tara Westover
Stand
Church
Family
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" 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. "
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" I didn't know if I would ever reconcile with my family, and I needed to believe that I could forgive, regardless. "
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" I have very non-eccentric hobbies. I like to read, to have dinner with friends, and junk out on TV like everybody else. "
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" 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. "
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" Anyone who grows up reading the Bible for spiritual reasons, you get accustomed to reading things that are too much for you, too profound for you... Having that belief that you should read them anyway gives you a great advantage over people who only read what they think they can understand. "
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" I think a lot of people have grown up with the idea that they can't learn things themselves. They think they need an institution to provide them with knowledge and teach them how to do things. I couldn't disagree more. "
Tara Westover
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" An education is not so much about making a living as making a person. "
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" At BYU, I discovered history, then historiography. I became fascinated with the study of historians and historical trends, with the idea that the way we remember the past changes and shifts with our own preoccupations. "
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" I have a theory that all abuse, no matter what kind of abuse it is, is foremost an assault on the mind. "
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Theory
Abuse
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" Publishing a book is a very different thing than writing one. "
Tara Westover
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Writing
Publishing
" I think, initially, my rebellion, my rebellion of going to college when my dad would have liked me to stay home and work in the herbs, I think that it was a pretty mild rebellion in the sense that I thought, 'Well, I'm going to go learn how to be a music teacher so that I can come home and do choir.' "
Tara Westover
Home
Work
College
" It was a quality of my childhood that everything had these two sides. Even though things could be really beautiful and peaceful one moment, they could also be a bit chaotic or maybe terrifying in another. "
Tara Westover
Childhood
Quality
Moment
" I choose not to see my parents because I value myself - and they didn't value me or my mind. "
Tara Westover
Mind
Parents
Value
" I had been educated in the rhythms of the mountain, rhythms in which change was never fundamental, only cyclical. The same sun appeared each morning, swept over the valley, and dropped behind the peak. The snows that fell in winter always melted in the spring. "
Tara Westover
Morning
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Sun
" 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 federal government, I just didn't exist. "
Tara Westover
Years
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" I had a mental breakdown while doing my Ph.D. at Cambridge, soon after I cut off contact with my parents, and I started seeing the university counsellor, one of the best decisions I ever made. There's something very nourishing in setting aside an hour a week to talk. "
Tara Westover
Parents
Doing
Decisions
" I can't have my family in my life because they are abusive, and I don't have control over that. There is an abusive culture in my family, and I have to turn away from it. "
Tara Westover
Family
My Life
Control
" I used to roof hay barns for my father. It's dangerous work. Writing is much better. "
Tara Westover
Better
Writing
Work
" When I came to Cambridge, I was involved in the ward for a little bit, but I did have a very gradual process of trying to work out what I thought a good life consisted of. "
Tara Westover
Good
Work
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" Things that I now recognise as just part of my personality - willfulness and assertiveness, maybe even a bit of aggressiveness - these are things that I had been raised to think of as masculine features. I always thought there was probably something wrong with me. "
Tara Westover
Think
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" In families like mine, there is no crime worse than telling the truth. "
Tara Westover
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" I think reading an audiobook is a real skill - for one thing, you have to be able to do impressions and voices, which I cannot do - and it's just not a skill I have. "
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" My older brother bought textbooks and was able to teach himself enough to go to college. When I was 16, he returned and told me to do the same thing. "
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" I had to be - I was in school for probably three or four years before I began taking courses in history and political science, and I just started to realize how big the world was. I mean, when I arrived in college, I didn't know anything. "
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" 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 a book of principle, it's a book of stories, and of myths and of epic tales, a book of histories and a book of fictions, of riddles, fables, parables and allegories. "
Tara Westover
Everything
Book
Bible
" All my father's stories were about our mountain, our valley, our jagged little patch of Idaho. "
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Mountain
Idaho
Stories
" Learning in our family was entirely self-directed. "
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Family
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" My brother once lit his leg on fire. And after, when the fire was finally out, his leg was covered in third-degree burns. And we made the decision - or my parents did - not to take him to the hospital but to treat that at home with a salve my mother made of comfrey and lobelia. "
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" 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. "
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" I think for people who are inside these relationships that are really hard to leave, there is always a compelling reason to stay. It's not that they are wholly bad people. "
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