What informs your writing?

Excerpt from “The Dream Lover,” by Elizabeth Berg:

“What once had been random observations and journal entries were becoming pieces of fiction that took on a kind of authority of their own.

I learned that wind informed, that memory informed, that hopes and dreams did.

So too, a fork on a plate, an unopened letter, the shine of wet on cobblestoned streets — all of these could help shape a story.”