At the end, wasn't the comment that he believed he _could_ see five lights?
It's possible this is a deliberate grammatical ambiguity, but I think it could also be read as "I was not just willing to say it, my reality was being destroyed".
PICARD: I, er, I don't know where to begin. It was...
TROI: I read your report.
PICARD: What I didn't put in the report was that at the end he gave me a choice between a life of comfort or more torture. All I had to do was to say that I could see five lights, when in fact, there were only four.
TROI: You didn't say it?
PICARD: No, no, but I was going to. I would have told him anything. Anything at all. But more than that, I believed that I could see five lights.