“An odd outlook on life is the beginning of good comedic writing.”

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p. 46

Source: Poetry and Craft (1965), p. 89

Tinselworm (2008)

The Wheel of Fortune (1984), Part 1: Robert
Context: A rational disposition must necessarily preclude a romantic outlook in life, and only the failures of this world can afford to dispense with a rational disposition.

Playboy interview (1996)

Part I, Ch. 1
Green Hills of Africa (1935)

(29 November 2001)
Unfit for Mass Consumption (blog entries), 2001
Context: I was thinking, earlier, how there's this stigma attached to "writing for money" and how odd that is, as though writing is akin to sex (another "creative" act?) and writing for money is akin to prostitution in the minds of so many people. Whoring with adjectives, so to speak. Do I give good prose? Look up the definition of "hack." So, there must be the perception that writing, like the priesthood, comes with some higher purpose in tow. Getting paid well somehow sullies the purer cause. I've heard writers dismiss something or another that they've written by explaining, "Oh, yes, I know that sucked, but I only wrote it because they paid me so much money." And then we might even forgive them a piece of crap, because we have a sensible explanation. That wasn't a real orgasm. I was only faking the plot. Dorothy Parker and F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner in Hollywood.

Festival Prayer Book: Yom Kippur (1960) p.IX