Tara Westover

"I decided to teach myself enough to pass the entrance exam."

"Every book I read was a window into a different world."

"University was supposed to be the place where I could become someone new."

"I had been taught to fear the outside world, but I had to learn to live in it."

"My education had separated me from my family."

"I was learning that the truth was more complicated than I had been taught."

"I had to unlearn everything I thought I knew."

"My father's world had no room for questions."

"Education was the key to my freedom."

"I had never been allowed to be a child."

"Everything changed when I left home."

"I was building a new identity, piece by piece."

"My family believed that education corrupted the soul."

"I had to learn to trust my own mind."

"The past has a way of catching up with you."

"I was alone, but I was free."

"My father had tried to teach me to fear reality."

"I learned more from books than from my family."

"Change was possible, but only if I was willing to change myself."

"I had to become a new person to survive."

"Education gave me the tools to understand the world."

"I was my father's daughter, but I was also my own person."

"The truth was harder to accept than the lies I had been told."

"I had to choose between two worlds."

"My education had made me a stranger to my family."

"I was learning to live with the consequences of the truth."

"Knowledge was the only weapon I had."

"I had to forgive myself for believing what I was taught."

"Education was my way out."

"I had a choice. I could let what he had done to me define who I was, and then limit myself out of fear. Or I could define myself for myself, and then try to live up to that definition."