Some major writers have a huge impact, like Ayn Rand, who to my mind is a lousy fiction writer because her writing has no compassion and virtually no humor. She has a philosophical and economical message that she is passing off as fiction, but it really isn't fiction at all.

No man can rob successfully over a period of years without pleasing the people he robs.

I learned how to live on five and sometimes ten dollars a week.

If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?

There are a lot of people who write very intensely about things they do not and cannot do.

I write a story as if it were a letter to someone and essentially, that's what you do.

Basically, fiction is people. You can't write fiction about ideas.