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

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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. "

" 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. "

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

" I have a theory that all abuse, no matter what kind of abuse it is, is foremost an assault on the mind. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" During my first semester of college, I raised my hand in a class and asked the professor to define a word I didn't know. The word was holocaust, and I had to ask because, until that moment, I had never heard of it. "

" 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 hate the the word 'disempower,' because it seems kind of cliche, but I do think that we take people's ability to self-teach away by creating this idea that that someone else has to do this for you, that you have to take a course, you have to do it in some formal way. "

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

" My family was, I think, a bit more radical than most Mormons, especially on the question of gender. So in my mind, growing up, there wasn't ever any question of what my future would look like. I would get married when I was 17 or 18. And I would be given some corner of the farm, and my husband would put a house on it, and we would have kids. "

" 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 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 taught myself algebra and a little grammar, and somehow I scraped a high enough score on the ACT to be admitted to Brigham Young University, even though I had no formal education. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

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

" 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. "