Which young adult authors have made an impact on your life?

Lloyd Alexander and the Prydain chronicles really had an impact on me. To watch Taran grow, facing challenges and seeing how he resolved them, really taught me a lot about how to handle the myriad issues that come along, even now. S.E. Hinton is another. Scott O'Dell helped really open my mind to other cultures.

"Young adult authors"? I don't know about that part but in terms of writers who have changed my perception of reality and my personal philosophy. I have quite a few. To begin with there was Hunter S. Thompson (who has unknowingly lit the fire to my love for writing) and Shakespeare who kept me reading. Then, I would like to mention the Bible, followed by Nietzsche, Kant, Schopenhauer, Hermann Hesse, Kierkegaard, Montaigne, Angello Beliotti, Oscar Wilde, and Noam Chomsky. I am probably forgetting one or two but overall I am a mixture of all these people and I would not be who I am without them.