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A love of books has opened so many doors for me. Stories have inspired me and taught me to aspire.

Reading and discovering fiction has taught me how to empathise, understand falling in love and all those complex relationships that people have to deal with.

This is what I have discovered - and it has been a gift in itself - that books live over and over again in different people's minds. That I might mean one thing as I write, but a reader's experiences will take it somewhere else. That is like a conversation, I think. It is a true connecting up.

The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

My mind has become somewhat like a book. What I mean by that is that when I look at the world, I see it as a story.

In the books I have written, I have created in my mind a universe. My kids say I have a village in my head and I live in that village, and it's true. When I start writing a book, characters from previous books reappear. All my emotions, my mind, my heart, my dreams, everything becomes connected with a new book, and nothing else really matters.

I'm not setting out to adapt books and work with books, but when really amazing stories come to you in that form, it's really hard to turn away from that.

Ever read a book that changed your life? Me neither.

Books stay with me and have shaped me and made huge impacts on my life.