# What writers have influenced the way you think? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 16, 2009, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-writers-have-influenced-the-way-you-think/521555 "2009-12-16T23:50:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![MacTech](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@MacTech](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacTech)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2009, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-writers-have-influenced-the-way-you-think/521555/41 "2009-12-20T04:45:27Z")
Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Mark Twain, and Robert Heinlein are obvious ones for me, as is Carl Sagan, and Stephen Hawking I have a few e-books on my iPhone that I’ve been getting around to reading as well, a few P.G. Wodehouse novels, some Confucius, Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Plato’s Republic, and Darwin’s Origin of Species ---
**Author:** ![raspberry\_hunter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@raspberry\_hunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raspberry_hunter)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-writers-have-influenced-the-way-you-think/521555/42 "2009-12-22T00:46:17Z")
C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Dante – C.S. Lewis was my first introduction to someone thinking intelligently about Christianity (though he’s got his own blind spots, to be sure), and the latter two subtly but surely influenced a lot about my personal theology. And I remember Susan Cooper’s Dark is Rising books being my first introduction to a thoroughly non-Christian worldview, which definitely also had a strong influence on my thinking. Oh! And, this is totally random, but there were these fantasy books, the Time Master trilogy, by Louise Cooper, that had this kind of… I don’t know… Manichean? worldview where good and evil/light and darkness had to be in balance, that had a _huge_ impact on the way I thought in middle school, though later I decided it was a little silly. And Tolkien. Probably in lots of ways; one random but important way is that it is directly due to him that I’m against the death penalty (“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”) And Heinlein and Rand, like everyone else. And, on the nonfiction side, Richard Feynman’s _Surely You’re Joking_ colors a lot of how I think and feel about science. ---
**Author:** ![LH75](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lh75/32/4438_2.png) [@LH75](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LH75)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-writers-have-influenced-the-way-you-think/521555/43 "2009-12-22T03:04:31Z")
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird Atticus Finch taught me the definition of character and integrity ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-writers-have-influenced-the-way-you-think/521555/44 "2009-12-22T03:07:13Z")
Robert Heinlein had an influence on me at an early age: he got me interested in science with Have Space Suit, Will Travel. Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins had an influence on me as a young adult. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2009, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-writers-have-influenced-the-way-you-think/521555/45 "2009-12-22T07:58:22Z")
Leon Uris for **Trinity** Colette (no particular translator) her non-fiction especially Hans Christian Anderson Longfellow (when I was 12-13) for the poems “Evangeline” and “The Wreck of the Hesperus” Johanna Spyri for **Heidi** Louisa Mae Alcott (as a child and adolescent) Henry David Thoreau Ralph Waldo Emerson (You can bet that I love Concord, MA) S. I. Hayakawa John Ciardi Tom Brown for **The Tracker** W.B. Yeats Ray Bradbury - for a short story about a fog horn and a poem about a tree Thomas (not Tom) Wolfe - for **Look Homeward Angel** Gloria Steinem Ernest Hemingway’s non-fiction Beverly P. St. John King David Hudson ? – the author of **Green Mansions** [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-writers-have-influenced-the-way-you-think/521555.md?page=2)