Tara Westover

"I was rewriting my own story"

"I became educated to survive"

"The distance between us grew insurmountable"

"My mind became my greatest weapon"

"I had a choice: I could accept my father's reality and trust that he knew me, or I could trust myself."

"What if I'm wrong? What if I've been wrong my whole life?"

"Everything I had worked for, all my years of study, had been to purchase for myself this one privilege: to see and to think."

"I no longer had to ask my father's permission to think."

"I was still me, but I was also someone new."

"I had been educated into a new world, but I couldn't go back to the old one."

"My father had always believed he was right, but he was just afraid."

"I learned that I could be strong without being angry."

"Education is the most powerful weapon you can have."

"I had to choose between my family and my mind."

"The most important thing I learned wasn't in any textbook."

"I was not born for this; I chose this."

"I had to become someone my family didn't recognize."

"Knowledge gave me power I never knew I could have."

"The hardest thing was admitting my father was wrong."

"Asking questions became my rebellion."

"I was not my father's daughter, I was my father's son."

"Everything I had worked for, all of my years of study, had been to free myself from my father's philosophy."

"I had been educating myself all along, I just hadn't realized it."

"The scar on my face was a reminder of what happens when you question authority."

"I had to choose between the family I was born into and the person I wanted to become."

"My mother's choices were not my own."

"Knowledge is power, but only if you're willing to leave everything behind to obtain it."

"I learned that the world is far more complex than the one I grew up in."

"Survival is not the same as living."

"I had to become my own teacher."