Top 100 Mike Birbiglia Quotes
#1. I love pizza so much, I would marry pizza, but it would just be an elaborate ploy to eat her whole family at the reception.
Mike Birbiglia
#3. I feel like everyone wants to make a movie that they feel passionate about watching.
Mike Birbiglia
#4. I went to the doctor, and they found something in my bladder. And whenever they find something, it's never anything good like, "We found something in your bladder AND IT'S SEASON TICKETS TO THE YANKEES!!"
Mike Birbiglia
#5. It was a hard name having growing up as a child. Some kids would call me names like "Birbiglebug" and "Birbibliography" and "Faggot". Some were more clever than others.
Mike Birbiglia
#7. I've found, being in Los Angeles, it's like living in a live-action Planet Hollywood.
Mike Birbiglia
#8. And so we go and I meet his parents. And it's a very strange thing meeting your girlfriend's boyfriend's parents for the first time. Part of you is angry for obvious reasons and part of you still wants to make a good impression. On a side note, they seemed in perfect health.
Mike Birbiglia
#9. When I started out, I really struggled as a comic because no one knew who I was, and sometimes I was telling stories, so it would take a while for people to get on board for things.
Mike Birbiglia
#10. Sex and pizza, they say, are similar. When it's good, it's good. When it's bad, you get it on your shirt.
Mike Birbiglia
#11. I just like, when you look at people who have long careers in film, they're able to make films that are far away from themselves, because they're metaphorical. It creates more opportunities, I think.
Mike Birbiglia
#12. How many people do you know who have thrown up on the Scrambler or a carnival ride? A lot of people, is the answer.
Mike Birbiglia
#13. High school is not unlike a Mormon fundamentalist cult where the women are claimed by the older and more powerful.
Mike Birbiglia
#14. It sounds so nerdy and pathetic, but what I always do on Sunday afternoon is bring my inbox down to zero, which is so sad. But e-mail has become like homework for adults. I'll have 141 messages from people who will be offended if I don't write back.
Mike Birbiglia
#15. You know the quickest way to get comedians to hate you? Do Letterman at age 24.
Mike Birbiglia
#16. The list of fun and easily fixed brain diseases is very short.
Mike Birbiglia
#17. It's interesting how sleepwalking in a certain way becomes an accumulation of your outside stimuli that's actually there and what's happening in your brain.
Mike Birbiglia
#18. Backup dancers are completely respectable. They're the studio musicians of dance.
Mike Birbiglia
#19. I think that my regrets mostly have to do with my relationship with my ex-girlfriend. Every once in a while, you get those flashback memories of conversations you had with your exes, and you just, like, wince when you're walking down the street. Something occurs to you, 'Oh, no, I said that.'
Mike Birbiglia
#20. It used to be that if you got on 'The Tonight Show,' your career was made. Now, if you're on 'The Tonight Show,' maybe 14 more people show up to your gig in Tulsa.
Mike Birbiglia
#21. As artists, we'd all love to not be commercial - to not sell out to the full extent that we are able. But you do what you have to do to pay New York rent and continue to do what you feel strongly about.
Mike Birbiglia
#22. Sometimes I'll go to the grocery store and buy a bunch of groceries as though I knew how to cook, which I don't, and as though I was going to be home for the next six days, which I won't.
Mike Birbiglia
#24. I like films that are so funny, dramatic and lifelike simultaneously, that you are laughing and cringing simultaneously all throughout the film.
Mike Birbiglia
#25. Sometimes I take this women's exercise class called Core Fusion at a place called Exhale. I shouldn't say it's a women's class. There's maybe two men.
Mike Birbiglia
#26. I thought, Hey, maybe these people shouldn't be making up holidays to drink more. Maybe if they drank less they might be able to title their newspaper articles more specifically. For example, I would title this last article Drunk Driver Hits Drunk Walker Drunkety-Drunk I'm So Drunk.
Mike Birbiglia
#27. I always have the best story at the party. Anyone telling a story at a party is like, 'No, no, you've got to listen to my story!' I'm like, 'Step aside, everybody. I'm going to blow the doors off this place.'
Mike Birbiglia
#28. Nothing that you want ever is what you think it is.
Mike Birbiglia
#29. Some people come up to me and say "You know, in Italy, it's pronounced Ber-beel-lia" And I say "Well, here in America, you're annoying ... "
Mike Birbiglia
#30. I find my fans are really funny people. Most comedians can't say that about their fans.
Mike Birbiglia
#31. When I moved to New York, I was wide-eyed. I was nice to everyone, which comedians hate.
Mike Birbiglia
#32. I love pizza. I want to marry it, but it would just be to eat her family at the wedding.
Mike Birbiglia
#33. There's something about small venues that's amazing for developing material. It's almost like you can not only hear people's response, but you can understand it. In bigger venues you lose that, but you gain this sense of camaraderie in the audience.
Mike Birbiglia
#35. I gravitated toward stand-up because there's no overhead. I mean, literally, there's no overhead: Often, you're outdoors performing in front of groups of people.
Mike Birbiglia
#36. I listened to this interview once with Jerry Seinfeld that really influenced my comedy and all of my writing, which is that when you're starting out in comedy, it's the audience that tells you what's funny about you. And you need to listen to that and make a note of that.
Mike Birbiglia
#38. I think because I've been working in front of audiences for so many years, I'm able to take in the input, good or bad, and just say, 'This is the part I agree with that you're saying, and these are the parts I don't agree with.'
Mike Birbiglia
#39. I think your tendency when you play yourself is to accentuate something about you that you think is the funny thing about you.
Mike Birbiglia
#41. I don't smoke a lot of pot anymore. No one wants to hang around a guy who ends every sentence with, "Do you guys hate me?"
Mike Birbiglia
#42. My writing process is very feedback-based. When I do stand-up, I listen to the audience. I try to understand what's connecting, what's not connecting, and then rewrite, rewrite and rewrite.
Mike Birbiglia
#43. My family isn't really Italian. We're more like Olive Garden Italian.
Mike Birbiglia
#44. My last name has the word 'big' in it. It seems like a logical progression that if you shed away the Bir and the lia, I'll just be Big.
Mike Birbiglia
#45. I think serious situations actually make for the best kind of belly laughs. But they're also the hardest to convert into comedy at the outset.
Mike Birbiglia
#46. In some sense, Comedy Central has made their audience into comedy connoisseurs.
Mike Birbiglia
#47. The key to eating healthy is not eating any food that has a TV commercial.
Mike Birbiglia
#48. I feel like people have more in common than the news reports. People getting along doesn't sell very well in the news. I find that to be deeply depressing.
Mike Birbiglia
#49. I'm generally so disoriented during the week about what I'm doing and where I am - I travel a lot - that when I'm home on a Sunday, I typically try to sleep in as much as I can.
Mike Birbiglia
#50. I got out of school in 2000, and I always wanted to be on 'This American Life,' since I first started telling stories. And that, I mean, that show is a little bit of a fortress. It's really hard to get stuff on that show.
Mike Birbiglia
#51. I try to think up material that might apply to the subjects they are studying. How many mitochondria does it take to power a cell? One. Because mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell. Not ready for prime time, that one.
Mike Birbiglia
#52. I think the thing I had to be careful about while writing a book was not to say anything that was revealing about other people that they would be uncomfortable with. I didn't want to make people angry - that's a real risk.
Mike Birbiglia
#53. I'm a comedian, and the other comedians are played by comedians, the same way that in 'Once' there are the musicians that hang out together.
Mike Birbiglia
#54. You need to know what doesn't work to know what works. It's especially true in improv and stand-up.
Mike Birbiglia
#55. They really cut to the chase in the urologist's examination room, and I tried to laugh. If this office were a movie, it would have been rated R.
Mike Birbiglia
#56. My problem with being in New York City is that you really can't make a living as a comedian. You can, but you have to also take writing jobs, which means less stage time.
Mike Birbiglia
#57. Every sleep doctor I've talked to said it was an urban legend that you shouldn't wake up a sleepwalker. All that will happen is that you will get condescended to.
Mike Birbiglia
#58. Directing your first film is like showing up to the field trip in seventh grade, getting on the bus, and making an announcement, 'So today I'm driving the bus.' And everybody's like, 'What?' And you're like, 'I'm gonna drive the bus.' And they're like, 'But you don't know how to drive the bus.'
Mike Birbiglia
#59. I read recently that women still make 30% less than men in the workplace. Which I think is fine, cause if we didn't make 30% more, you guys would marry each other.
Mike Birbiglia
#60. I sometimes think of not doing Twitter or Facebook anymore, but that's how people find their favorite bands and comedians.
Mike Birbiglia
#61. You can always tell who went to catholic school, because they're atheists.
Mike Birbiglia
#62. The thing with film is that it's so wide-reaching compared to comedy. When I release my comedy special, half a million people will see it. If I release a movie, five to ten million people will see it.
Mike Birbiglia
#63. When I go to bed at night, I wear a sleeping bag. And for a long time, I wore mittens so that I couldn't open the sleeping bag.
Mike Birbiglia
#64. The Comedy Central CDs combined with the TV specials are what led to my stuff being traded and passed around, and a lot more people knowing my jokes than I thought.
Mike Birbiglia
#66. Once you start writing something obsessively, it's almost like someone has to rip it from your hands in order for you to put it down.
Mike Birbiglia
#67. If I dream that I'm directing, it's not a film, it's like a commercial for cotton candy, and I've got four feet of cotton candy all around me that I've got to break through, like a brick wall or a fortress.
Mike Birbiglia
#68. I shouldn't say bad things about the illiterate, though..I should write it. That way they won't find out.
Mike Birbiglia
#69. Sometimes people say, 'You're the best at digressions.' And that's actually a real compliment to me.
Mike Birbiglia
#70. Random people, celebrities of note come to your shows over the years, and I've had some really strange ones. Like the guy from Kiss. Gene Simmons has literally been in the audience at my shows, like, four times. I don't know if he knows me; he's just a big fan of comedy.
Mike Birbiglia
#71. I am intimidating no one in America. No one feels like they are below me in any way. They feel like they are absolutely either at or above my level and 100-percent comfortable talking to me.
Mike Birbiglia
#72. The one thing you're most reluctant to tell. That's where the comedy is.
Mike Birbiglia
#73. Creepy people do the things that decent people want to do, but have decided are not a great idea.
Mike Birbiglia
#74. I have a following, but it's small. I have this level of fame where people spot me in the airport, consistently, but they always think they're the only one who ever has. People will think they win a prize when they recognize me.
Mike Birbiglia
#75. I grew up in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts and went to college in Washington D.C.
Mike Birbiglia
#76. I almost can't even put to words how happy I am that I got married.
Mike Birbiglia
#77. I think the reason why I'm so alluring to networks is because on the surface I'm like a quintessential relatable, boring white guy. A great many sitcoms have been anchored by a boring white guy, so I feel like what they want to mine from me are my more generic qualities.
Mike Birbiglia
#78. I went to a funeral recently, and they handed out Kleenex before the funeral. Which I thought was cocky.
Mike Birbiglia
#79. There's nothing funny the first time about telling a story about getting beat up and it makes you leave high school.
Mike Birbiglia
#81. Alienation, I suppose, can't be hackneyed because it will always exist.
Mike Birbiglia
#82. When you're in a relationship with someone who's selfish, what keeps you in it is the fact that when they shine on you, it's this souped-up shine. And you feel like you're in the club. And you don't even know what club it is. You just know you want to stay in it.
Mike Birbiglia
#83. I was raised Catholic, and then I kind of wandered away somewhere in high-school. I never got confirmed, which is a big deal.
Mike Birbiglia
#84. I never looked at my parents' marriage or really anyone who had been married more than 30 years and thought, 'I gotta get me some of that!'
Mike Birbiglia
#85. When you're in high school, you can't even imagine the concept of what the rest of your life even means.
Mike Birbiglia
#87. I take the subway four times a day, or close to it. I just love the subway! My grandfather worked as an electrician when they were digging the subway.
Mike Birbiglia
#88. When I met my wife, I was a working comic, so the first week we went out, she saw me perform, and it was very clear what I do.
Mike Birbiglia
#89. If you tried to sell Mike Birbiglia as a concept, no one would buy it.
Mike Birbiglia
#90. Bears are simultaneously so graceful and so strong. Bears know who they are, but they often don't know who you are, which is why they kill you.
Mike Birbiglia
#92. Two Drink Mike enjoys dancing and knows a magic trick. Whereas, No Drink Mike enjoys biographies, and has serious opinions on wildlife. And Five Drink Mike ... dances with wildlife.
Mike Birbiglia
#93. I didn't realize how good I was with computers until I met my parents.
Mike Birbiglia
#94. The ability to workshop in stand-up comedy is incomparable to any art form, in my opinion.
Mike Birbiglia
#95. I was a screenwriting major at Georgetown, and I was in class with some really strong writers like Jonathan Nolan, who co-wrote 'The Dark Knight' with Chris, his brother. He wrote 'The Prestige,' the story for 'Memento.'
Mike Birbiglia
#96. After I perform 'My Girlfriend's Boyfriend,' it takes a lot out of me emotionally; and, at the end of it, I feel like I know the audience and the audience knows me. It's this weird unspoken bond that we'll kind of always have with each other.
Mike Birbiglia
#97. I've become good friends with Lena Dunham, and the thing I had in common with Lena when I was 24 is I was as ambitious as she was. What we don't have in common is that I was not as talented. My voice was not as clearly defined.
Mike Birbiglia
#98. Someone gave me a piece of advice once, my first manager Lucien Hold. He said, 'If you do stand-up about your own life, no one can steal it.' I always thought that was the best piece of advice.
Mike Birbiglia
#99. People are making better and better small budge independent films these days.
Mike Birbiglia
#100. I like 'Donnie Darko;' it's a cool take on dreams and sleep.
Mike Birbiglia
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