Educated — Vocabulary
Tara Westover
(Edited)

"Sometimes God calls them home, and there's nothing anyone can do. But if it happens to a midwife—" She turned, speaking directly to me. "All it takes is one mistake, and you'll be visiting me in prison."p.21.9alternate pages52 more

I don't know why I asked her to wait, what benefit I thought time would yield.p.270.1alternate pages10 more

If I yielded now, I would lose more than an argument. I would lose custody of my own mind.p.304.6alternate pages10 more

The irony was that if Dad was bipolar—or had any of a dozen disorders that might explain his behavior—the same paranoia that was a symptom of the illness would prevent its ever being diagnosed and treated.p.30.1alternate pages9 more

Then I was able to tell myself, without lying, that it didn't affect me, that he didn't affect me, because nothing affected me. I didn't understand how morbidly right I was. ... For all my obsessing over the consequences of that night, I had misunderstood the vital truth: that it's not affecting me, that was its effect.p.111.9alternate pages3 more

There's a sense of sovereignty that comes from life on a mountain, a perception of privacy and isolation, even of dominion. ... It's a tranquillity born of sheer immensity; it calms with its very magnitude, which renders the merely human of no consequence.p.27.3alternate pages3 more

Later the doctors would speculate that when Dad, Luke and Benjamin had wrestled Shawn to the ground—and he'd sustained a concussion—he was already in critical condition.p.129.3alternate pages3 more

I couldn't copy her essays, and I lacked the factual and stylistic know-how to compose my own.p.163.1alternate pages2 more

The ACT was composed of four sections: math, English, science and reading.p.134.6alternate pages2 more

When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? In the days that followed, I wrote that passage everywhere—unconsciously, compulsively.  I find it now in books I was reading, in my lecture notes, in the margins of my journal.p.301.1alternate pages5 more

"Tell me," he would say, "why have you placed this comma here? What relationship between these phrases are you hoping to establish?"p.239.5alternate pages1 more

I've asked my brothers, aunts, uncles and cousins, but I have not been able to definitively establish a timeline, and have therefore relied on my own memories.p.18.9alternate pages1 more

I left the hall the moment dessert was served. It was a relief to escape all that refinement and beauty—to be allowed to be unlovely and not a point of contrast.p.242.1alternate pages2 more

Now I needed to understand how the great gatekeepers of history had come to terms with their own ignorance and partiality: I thought if I could accept that what they had written was not absolute but was the result of a biased process of conversation and revision, maybe I could reconcile myself with the fact that the history most people agreed upon was not the history I had been taught.p.238.7alternate pages1 more

I wanted my life to make sense, and nothing in that narrative made sense to me.p.249.9alternate pages2 more

Mother described my father as bipolar. It was the exact disorder that I myself suspected. It was my word, not hers. Then I wonder if perhaps my mother, who had always reflected so perfectly the will of my father, had that night merely been reflecting mine.p.289.8alternate pages8 more

Now, when I reflect on my mother's words, remembering the way they appeared as if by magic on the screen, one detail stands above the rest: that Mother described my father as bipolar.p.289.6alternate pages8 more

The italics used on this page indicate that the language from the referenced email is paraphrased, not directly quoted.p.269.9alternate pages3 more

On my twenty-seventh birthday, the birthday I had chosen, I submitted my PhD dissertation.p.318.9alternate pages3 more

It is difficult for me to believe that the untroubled young man in that photograph is my father. Fearful and anxious, he comes into focus for me as a weary middle-aged man stockpiling food and ammunition.p.29.2alternate pages15 more