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

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" 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. "

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

" 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 had access to books, and I could read... but that more foundational, basic historical awareness, I didn't have any of that. "

" I might just not be a big-city bug. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I had been raised in the mountains of Idaho by a father who distrusted many of the institutions that people take for granted - public education, doctors and hospitals, and the government. "

" 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. "

Believe In Yourself

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

" There was a lot of beauty in my childhoood. "

" Learning in our family was entirely self-directed. "

" 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. "

" I didn't know if I would ever reconcile with my family, and I needed to believe that I could forgive, regardless. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" BYU was a really positive place for me. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

Telling The Truth

" The things about my childhood that I really loved the most, writing about those things was hard because I knew they would never happen again. "

" I have books I like very much, but I don't think there are any books that everyone should read. I prefer a world in which some people read this, and others read that. "

" 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. "

" I do think we have collectively begun to conflate the institutions of education for education itself. Education is an individual's pursuit of understanding and has a lot of implications for that person, for the kind of person that they are. "

" 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 when you want to be loyal to your family but you feel that loyalty to them is in conflict somehow with loyalty to yourself? "

" Because I never attended elementary schools of any kind, I missed most of the books that were popular with other kids my age. There was an exception, however, which was 'Harry Potter.' My grandmother gave me the first book when I was about 13, and I read it, then read all the rest. "