The person who influenced me to the greatest extent is Franz Kafka; not only through his works, but also through his life, and I dare say, even through his personality. Although he died long before I was born, and in spite of his best efforts to conceal his personality from posterity, his life, his inner turmoil, reached out to me over the decades, and, to what I believe to be a great extent, shaped me. 
	It is said that before his death, Kafka left word to his best friend, Max Brod, to burn all his unpublished works. Kafka's manuscripts, which Brod did not only keep, but also publish, have one contrasting feature in comparison to the rest of his works. They lack the cold distance, the impersonality, which is so evident in Kafka's short stories and parables. 
	 At a rather young age I read “The Trial”, which to this day remains my favorite book; and from the moment I laid it down, I knew I was thirsty for more. I do not consider myself a pessimist or nihilist, so my taste for Kafka may seem unlikely. But it is the very action of following and understanding his thoughts which contributed to me being neither of both. The sheer feeling of adversity, inherent in all of his works, but especially in those he did not want published, inspired me to overcome any condition with the slightest resemblance to that of his protagonists, and as I was to find out later on,  to that of Kafka himself. My passion for the suffocating atmosphere of his imagination led me to travel to Prague and beyond, to follow his footsteps; and also led me to read every single sentence written by Kafka, which survived the decades and was accessible to me. And every last bit of my research paid off; as even skimming through the long, sometimes pointless passages of Kafka's correspondence, gave me a solid idea of what one has to overcome at any cost.