It's the beauty and curse of doing a daily show. Some days you've got nothing to talk about and other days Dick Cheney shoots his lawyer in the face and everyone is happy.
Late night is no different than making a film, really, except that it's faster, and if you do a crap one, you can do a better one tomorrow. Writing a novel and doing stand-up - that stuff is very similar.
I remember talking to someone early on after I was sober about how I suddenly felt awkward at parties. They said, 'Well, you're supposed to. Everyone feels awkward at parties.' It's an appropriate feeling to feel.
I think that clearly it has an influence, to be coming of age during the punk rock era, to come from a difficult and sporadically violent background, to have been in and out of such chaos, I think it actually helps. But I don't know for sure.
I came to America, and I made good. It's an old story, but it hasn't been told in a long time. Usually, it's, 'I'm an immigrant, I came here and got persecuted.' My story is I came here, I worked hard, and it worked out all right. So it's still available.
I got sober. I stopped killing myself with alcohol. I began to think: 'Wait a minute - if I can stop doing this, what are the possibilities?' And slowly it dawned on me that it was maybe worth the risk.
I think sometimes that people think brave means not being afraid, which of course it doesn't mean that at all. It means that you're afraid, but you move past that and do it anyway, do what you think is right.
