What inspires me as a writer?

Inspiration, writes Chuck Palahniuk in a daily telegraph article, "needs disease, injury, madness." Sounds about right from where I'm standing. I've broken my ankle (after getting hit by a car), had to live with an alcoholic father and a disappearing mother; experimented with tons of drugs, had my best friend die in my arms, lived homeless for a little while so as my father nor the police could find me (for reasons I don't deem necessary to proclaim) and last but not least, I decided to come to university, the activity which appropriately stands out. So what inspires me? All of the above, to steal a line from Blade Runner "I've seen things you wouldn't believe". Thats not to sound arrogant or portray the image of an idiot saying " look what I've done in my life you boring nimrods", its just to say, I have lived a particularly full life of someone at the ripe old age of 21. I have been inspired by my mistakes, mistakes which I repeated and repeated until finally, I learnt something from it, stored it in my long term memory with the hope that one day, I would be able to write it down! I don't however, get inspired by books. Sure, I'll be able to learn techniques and crafts of no doubt brilliant writers but, I find myself stuck on my rebel nature to do things my way and my arrogance to say, its been done before, why the heck should I do it?