Since Lenny Bruce was a comic, he wasn’t really considered a writer. But that’s all comics do is write, even if they never put pen to paper. Every bit of their act is crafted, molded, sweated over, and knocked into shape by a grisly process they call “working it out” and your average writer just calls “editing.”

Bruce’s writerly output was thin. Too much time on stage and in jail, most likely, not to mention the chasing down of various substances. But he, or at least his spirit, still has advice to give.

Consider this scene from the end of the first episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. The title character, an aspiring standup, bails the Bruce character (played with elan by the astounding Luke Kirby) out of jail. Then, eager to know if it’s all worth it (the hours, the pay, the hecklers, the grind), Maisel asks him straight up, “Comedy. Standup. Do you love it?” Bruce responds:

Let’s put it like this: If there was anything else in the entire world that I could possibly do to earn a living, I would. Anything. I’m talking drycleaners to the Klan. Crippled kid portrait painter. Slaughterhouse attendant. If someone said to me, ‘Leonard, you can either eat a guy’s head or do two weeks at the Copa,’ I’d say, ‘Pass the f—— salt.’ It’s a terrible, terrible job. It should not exist. Like cancer. And God…

Asked by Maisel again, “Do you love it?” he shrugs and gives her a cracked madhouse grin.

Every writer knows what he means. It’s awful, this thing we do day in and day out.

But we love it.