A question was asked: "First of all, a writer needs to have a thirst for life and for living".

I don't know if "a thirst for life and living" is exactly what drives me but being a student of human behavior is definitely part of it.  I call myself a 'people collector'.  When I have an experience of someone "different" I catalog them, in my mind and sometimes in a file.  I love meeting new people because it adds to my store of inspiration.  I've often said that writing inspiration is not a river or a well, it's a cistern.  The difference between a well and a cistern is that a well fills up by itself, to take water out of a cistern you have to put it in, in the first place.  Without my store of knowledge of people and places and cultures, I wouldn't have anything from which to draw my inspirations and conclusions.  Fiction isn't about the "5w's and an h"  it's about the sixth w "what IF".  Without a store of knowledge beyond ones own mundane life experiences, imagining that what if is very hard, nigh impossible to do.