I think most serious writers, certainly in the modern period, use their own lives or the lives of people close to them or lives they have heard about as the raw material for their creativity.

Hope is the raw material of losers.

I like to think of the notebooks as a pool of raw material, ... I make plays of out it, so why can't other people? I just identify with this idea that I'm a funnel for this material that doesn't particularly belong to me.

In writing fiction, I can be free. I can use my life. The raw material is my experiences.

I love people. Everybody. I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me.

The world is not to be approached, blueprint in hand, as if it were so much raw material waiting to be fashioned to someone's design.