Good music always defeats bad luck
An inch of foreknowledge is worth ten miles of after-thought.
I got done writing Ports of Call and suddenly realized I have far too much material for the book.
I was an omnivore at reading, so that everything I ever read contributed.
You used the word "civilization", which means a set of abstractions, symbols, conventions. Experience tends to be vicarious; emotions are predigested and electrical; ideas become more real than things.
Well, I think everything I've ever read contributes to the background from which I write.