Lies are just another kind of storytelling, but with the very distinct and enlivening motive of desperation. Since writers are by nature desperate creatures, they usually do a pretty good (or pretty awful, but always interesting) job of lying.

I am someone who values truth - actual truth as opposed to 'truthiness.'

I never stopped feeling abject terror until I got on television and went on a national ad campaign and realized, "I will be able to feed my children. I have somehow averted the destiny that awaited me, which is endless, crippling debt forever."

Specificity is the soul of narrative.

I think in American culture, we put value on economic success but tell people you don't have to be economically successful to be happy.

Generally speaking, I, like anyone else who does anything publicly, like it when people like what I do, and would like to hear as much.

That catharsis is really the core of the incredibly personal comedy of Louis C.K. or Marc Maron or whatever. And look - I find it fascinating that I'm sitting here talking about some of these things, and not to low tones, and my kids are in the other room. I have to trust that if they hear what I'm saying and they have questions about it, I'll be able to answer it, and that's fine. But that's part of the scariness of it - the reality of opening up my own life and my own feelings.