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" 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. "

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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. "

Tara Westover

Brother

Fire

Home

" 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. "

Tara Westover

Write

Writing

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

" I didn't read much in high school, maybe because I didn't go to high school. Instead, I worked. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

Tara Westover

Think

Some People

" We'd had books in my house growing up, but we had never had anything like lectures. I had never written an essay for my mother. I had never taken an exam. Because I was working a lot as a kid, I just hadn't elected to read that much. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" I had grown up preparing for the Days of Abomination, watching for the sun to darken, for the moon to drip as if with blood. "

Tara Westover

Moon

Sun

" Academic writing is such a different way of writing. "

" 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 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. "

" For a long time, I didn't think I had the right to walk away from my family. "

" 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. "

" 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! "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

Tara Westover

Mother

Her

" I was 17 the first time I set foot in a classroom, but 10 years later, I would graduate from Cambridge with a Ph.D. 'Educated' is the story of how I came by my education. It is also the story of how I lost my family. "

" 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. "

" Psychologically, when you hear something a number of times, you start to believe it. "

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

Tara Westover

Miles

Loyalty

" I read a handful of memoirs to get a sense of what the genre meant. I needed to learn the fundamentals of the craft. I had never written a word of narrative. What is a tense shift, what is point of view? I didn't know any of it. "