Yeah, Thomas Wolfe. James Lee Burke made me think of him a few years ago...Burke is florid storyteller of detective tales. The Robicheaux novels...wordy stuff about Louisiana and police procedural and swamps. 'In the Electric Mist with the Confederate Dead' was the one I liked best.

Philip K. Dick for sci-fi. Heinrich Boll for German fiction. Joseph Conrad and Jerzy Kosinski...Poles who learned and wrote in English. Both excelled.

But the Bible probably influenced me the most because everyone around me follows it to one degree or another and reads it daily.