"It doesn't matter who you are, where you come from. The ability to triumph begins with you. Always."

 I was born in rural Mississippi in 1954. I was born at home. There were not a lot of educated people around and my name had been chosen from the Bible. My Aunt Ida had chosen the name, but nobody really knew how to spell it, so it went down as "Orpah" on my birth certificate, but people didn't know how to pronounce it, so they put the "P" before the "R" in every place else other than the birth certificate. On the birth certificate it is Orpah, but then it got translated to Oprah. 

I was raised on a farm with my grandmother for the first six years of my life -- I knew somehow that my life would be different and it would be better. I never had a clear cut vision of what it was I would be doing. I remember absolutely physically feeling it at around four years old. I remember standing on the back porch and my grandmother was boiling clothes because we didn't have washing machines, and so people would physically boil clothes in a great big iron pot. And I was watching her from the back porch, and I remember thinking, "My life won't be like this. My life won't be like this, it will be better."

And it wasn't from a place of arrogance, it was just a place of knowing that things could be different for me somehow. I don't know what made me think that. It is the reason why I am where I am today because my grandmother gave me the foundation for success that I was allowed to continue to build upon. My grandmother taught me to read, and that opened the door to all kinds of possibilities for me.

 If you'd asked me at the time if we were poor, I probably would have said, "no" because when you are living it and you don't know anything else, you think that's the way life is. And I was raped when I was nine by a cousin, and never told anybody until I was in my late twenties. Not only was I raped by a cousin, I was raped by a cousin, and then later sexually molested by a friend of the family, and then by an uncle. It was just an ongoing, continuous thing. So much so, that I started to think, you know, "This is the way life is."

The big lesson for me has been to learn: not only do you have the right to do whatever you want, you have the right to change your mind. Which has gotten me into so much trouble in my life. Like I'd say, "Oh, but, I have to go. I said I was going to do it." And then later you think about it, and you realize "I shouldn't be doing this, but I said I was going to do it, and I don't want to make anybody upset." It has taken me 37 years to figure that out, to get that straight. I think, "Oh, my goodness, if I had learned this 20 years ago, look at all the time I could have saved. Look where I could have been."

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The greatest thing about what I do, for me, is that I'm in a position to change people's lives. It is the most incredible platform for influence that you could imagine, and it's something that I hold in great esteem and take full responsibility for. I mean, I do every show in prayer, not down on my knees praying, but I do it before every show - a mental meditation in order to get the correct message across.

 You're dealing with millions of people every day, and it's very easy for something to be misinterpreted, so my intention is always, regardless of what the show is -- whether it's about sibling rivalry or wife battering or children of divorce -- for people to see within each show that you are responsible for your life, that although there may be tragedy in your life, there's always a possibility to triumph. It doesn't matter who you are, where you come from. The ability to triumph begins with you. Always, always.