What author influenced you most, to pursue writing?

Tolkien, it's always been Tolkien.

But the one person who really pushed me to start writing was my 8th grade resource teacher. At that time in my life, I was struggling with my grades, timid, and undergrown. My learning disability was in full swing, and my ego was nonexistent.

One day I just happened to mentioned that writing was something I liked to do, and she handed me a blank piece of paper. When I asked her what I should write, she said-"Whatever you want". So I did. I wrote a story of three boys finding echoes of a lost world in a junkyard.

And the rest is history.

 

Tolkien got me hooked on reading.
I was in the third grade and i was deliriously sick. Reading the pages make me feel like i was in the book.

I coasted the next few years. I read a lot but not much stuck with me until I read Ender's Game. I was hooked again; I read all the sequels, Bean's spin off, anything i could get my hands on.

About 5 more years passed without anything really catching my interest, everything seemed like variations of the same. That's when I (finally) stumbled upon The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
That book took everything I knew about stories, shredded it, and made a paper mache dolls that laughed at me through the 4th wall.

Most recently The First Law trilogy has influenced me.

 

I wrote little stories, usually about unicorns, pirates, and witches in space (yes, in the same story) even when I was little, and barely had a grasp of handwriting (not that it's great now). Usually, the stories were more illustrations than prose, and I graduated to drawing and writing my own comics and cartoon strips by second grade. I wanted to draw comics or be an animator when I grew up, so the writing was just getting the story down so I could get on with the drawing. In fact, it wasn't until my junior year of high school that I thought I could actually be a writer, and that was due to my English teacher at the time.
If I had to pick a writer, though, who was the biggest early influence on my writing, it would probably be K. A. Applegate, who wrote the Animorphs books. I DEVOURED those books in middle school. The Dragonlance books introduced me to epic fantasy, and Piers Anthony's Xanth books showed me that fantasy could be funny (yes, I know they're not that great, but I was 13).
Honestly, I could go on ad nauseam about all the authors I've read and loved and whose influence could be seen in my work.

 

To be honest completely honest, I haven't read an entire book since sixth grade. Sure, I've had writing assignments, but I couldn't go a few chapters without spark-noting it (shh). The only book I can say I completely enjoyed was Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and Kane Chronicles. Those were so entertaining and had appealing language to me. Haven't seen it in a while though, so maybe my opinions have changed.
So.. it was solely Rick Riordan that influenced me to become a writer.