It's hard for writers to get on with their work if they are convinced that they owe a concrete debt to experience and cannot allow themselves the privilege of ranging freely through social classes and professional specialties. A certain pride in their own experience, perhaps a sense of the property rights of others in their experience, holds them back.
Saul Bellow (2016). “It All Adds Up: From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future”, p.62, Odyssey Editions