Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
As a kid, books were my great escape and my salvation.
I was passionate about reading from an early age, and I would always be carrying a different book each week.
I loved books; I read my childhood away. I was more interested in my interior world.
I could read at a very early age and I loved stories, losing myself in stories, novels.
I was encouraged to be imaginative and read, and it was a great childhood for a budding writer because I had the time and the freedom to go into a world of my own.
The only book in our home was the Bible. My parents forbade books. They thought I needed help because I wanted to be a writer!
Books were this wonderful escape for me because I could open a book and disappear into it, and that was the only way out of that house when I was a kid.
I attended school regularly for three years. I learned to read and write. 'Lamb's Tales' from Shakespeare was my favourite reading matter. I stole, by finding, Palgrave's 'Golden Treasury.' These two books, and the 'Everyman' edition of John Keats, were my proudest and dearest possessions, my greatest wealth.
I think I had a particular moment when I was 15 years old. I read 'Crime and Punishment,' and that book just, I think, more than any other book made me want to be a writer, 'cause it was the first time that I hadn't just entered a book, but a book had entered me.
My father was a tyrant about reading, and that put me off books when I was little.