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" 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. "

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" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" My mother was a midwife and a herbalist, so we would go on these long walks, looking for yarrow or rosehips or whatever she needed to make her tinctures. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

Telling The Truth

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

" I felt like we had stories about family loyalty; I didn't feel like we had stories about what to do when you felt that loyalty to your family was in conflict with loyalty to yourself. "

" 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

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

" I get up when I feel like getting up. That's the deal I've made with myself: I can stay in bed as long as my dog's bladder holds. The other half of that deal is that once the dog is walked, the very next thing I do is write. It's mechanical. It's programming, very nearly brainwashing. "

" 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. "

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

" 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? "

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

" 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 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. "

" When you write, you are alone. It can be a bit of a shock later to discover that people have read what you've written! "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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.' "

" 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. "