Tara Westover

"You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye to them."

"I was afraid I had been damned for wanting to know things that my father did not want me to know."

"That was when I understood that we had different memories of the same event."

"I was my father's daughter. But I was also myself."

"I had come to understand that I was not the person I had believed myself to be."

"The person you become depends on the person you decide to be."

"I had never been free. I had never believed myself capable of being free."

"Knowledge had come to me, and I had come to knowledge."

"I learned that if you have a good story, you can survive anything."

"I had been defined by my father's beliefs, but I could choose to define myself."

"It was a strange thing to realize that I had been lonely my whole life."

"I was not the person I had been raised to be."

"My father had taught me to fear the world, but the world had taught me something else."

"I had never questioned anything before. Now I questioned everything."

"I chose to believe in myself, even when no one else did."

"Education gave me permission to disagree with my father."

"I had to learn that my feelings were valid, even if my family said they weren't."

"I realized that I could be both grateful for my upbringing and critical of it."

"The most important education was learning to think for myself."

"I had to become brave enough to leave behind the only world I had ever known."

"My past did not have to define my future."

"I learned that survival sometimes means walking away from the people you love."

"I had never imagined a version of myself that was separate from my family."

"Education was not just about learning facts; it was about learning to see the world differently."

"I realized that the person I wanted to become required leaving behind the person I had been."

"I had been afraid of so many things, but the thing I feared most was freedom."

"My father believed that ignorance was a form of purity. I learned that knowledge is freedom."

"I chose education over loyalty to my family's beliefs."

"I had to learn that it was okay to be angry at the people who raised me."

"I realized that my story could belong to me, not just to my family's narrative."