Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.

I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't and then tries the short story which is the most demanding form after poetry. And failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.

Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain

A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others

I walked a mile with Pleasure;
She chatted all the way;
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow;
And ne’er a word said she;
But, oh! The things I learned from her,
When Sorrow walked with me.

A gentleman can live through anything.