Inspire Me

A news story caught my imagination the other day. The story was tragic. A woman had been stabbed to death, but the child she was carrying was saved.
Unbidden, my mind started going through the possibilities of using this in a story. What was this child's life going to be like? Did they have family? And so on.
It's amazing the things that kick your imagination into overtime working out storyline after storyline until it settles into an idea. If the idea is good enough, it'll pester you, the characters will be able to voice their opinions and force you to finally pay them attention.
Another example of this happening to me is a story I'm working on now. I had a dream of a girl forced to fight in a fight she was ignorant of until she was thrust into it. She was mad as hell about it too. I remember her ranting as she was fighting. The next day she bugged me until I just started writing her story during my break at work. The story is still developing, but she's so vibrant, so different from any of my other work. I'm glad I'm writing her story. I'm also glad she got me to do it in first person. It didn't feel right wrote any other way.

So my question is what inspires you? Where do your ideas come from? Have you ever had a story take hold of you until you had to write it? And have the characters become bossy little voices in your head ranting they want you to hurry up and work on their story?