Oprah Winfrey: 'Reading was my escape'

Oprah Winfrey has said that books were her escape as a child.

The talkshow host told Parade that it was literature that first showed her a world that existed outside her home.

Winfrey said: "I really had a faith in something bigger than myself. So I always knew from the time I was about 4 years old that the life I was living in rural Mississippi with my grandmother was not going to be my future.

"Don't ask me how I knew. I wasn't a dreamer as much as I was a reader. That allowed me to see from an early, early age that there was a world beyond my backyard, literally - there was a world bigger than I could imagine."

She added: "I'd never been anywhere any farther than the church that was down the road, which you could see from the front porch.

"I guess where the words took me was to let my imagination flow. When I was reading, that was my escape."