Tara Westover

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.

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

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.

BYU was a really positive place for me.

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 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?

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

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.

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.

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

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

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!

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.

I don't really feel like I belong anywhere.

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

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

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

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 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.