Top 70 Mike Birbiglia Quotes

My dad goes through war novels like I go through boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

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.

I drank the Kool-Aid of being a network star. Once it didn’t happen, I realized it wasn’t the best version of my comedy.

First time films are hard. Even with some of the greatest directors, you look back at their first film, and you are just going, ‘That movie is kind of bad.’

Everything about starting out in comedy is pride-swallowing, from handing out fliers to bombing in front of audiences.

I feel that marriage can lead to the ultimate rejection and failure and divorce and things we all fear.

With a monologue, you can be unendingly elliptical.

I always live tweet ‘SNL.’

Over the years, I managed to develop this comedy career, went from opening act to headliner at comedy clubs, to playing concert halls, and had an off-Broadway show with ‘Sleepwalk With Me.’

Nobody knows the life of the working comic.

Sometimes, occasionally, people will make out in the audience, completely not aware that there’s a human being onstage just yards away from them, who can see them. Sometimes people think that you’re on television while you’re onstage, so you’re not even a person.

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.

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.

One of my favourite movies is ‘Annie Hall’ because it’s about the silver lining of the break-up.

I love pizza. I want to marry it, but it would just be to eat her family at the wedding.

I was raised Catholic, and then I kind of wandered away somewhere in high-school. I never got confirmed, which is a big deal.

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.

When you’re in high school, you can’t even imagine the concept of what the rest of your life even means.

Film is so immersive.

What I always studied in screenwriting from my mentor John Glavin was that the most interesting characters are characters with shades of gray.

You get to the end of something, you’re laughing, you’re like, ‘That’s funny, and that’s funny,’ and then you get to the end, and the credits come down, and you’re like, ‘That’s it?! That’s the whole thing?! You had me here for that?!’ I just don’t want to do that.

The ability to workshop in stand-up comedy is incomparable to any art form, in my opinion.

You don’t really see sleepwalking in films that often. It’s weird; I feel like in popular culture we have the perception of sitcom, arms-in-front-of-your-body sleepwalking, and then maybe Olive Oil and Popeye when she sleepwalks through the construction site. But it’s all very cartoonish, in some cases literally.

Sometimes you’ll have a heckler who’s actually attempting to be supportive, but you don’t realize it. Their way of expressing it is kind of confusing.

As a comedian, you want people to like you. That’s part of why you’re there in the first place: You have this unquenchable need to be liked, and then when you divert from that and take a chance at doing something that has moments of fierce unlikeability, you can hit some real low points.

Every comedian comes to a fork in the road where they have to decide if they’re going to make jokes about other people or make jokes about themselves. I chose myself.

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.

I sometimes think of not doing Twitter or Facebook anymore, but that’s how people find their favorite bands and comedians.

When I moved to New York, I was wide-eyed. I was nice to everyone, which comedians hate.

Backup dancers are completely respectable. They’re the studio musicians of dance.

I’m going to end up making twenty films if people let me.

I majored in screenwriting and playwriting in school – and wanted to make films as a career. But when I directed my first short in college – which was called ‘Extras’ – I lost thousands of dollars and made an unsatisfying and incomplete film.

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.’

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!’

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.

Sometimes people say, ‘You’re the best at digressions.’ And that’s actually a real compliment to me.

People are making better and better small budge independent films these days.

I was very much a late bloomer. That’s not to say that girls didn’t express interest in me from time to time, but I just, I did not know how to respond to that.

I would be so mad if I saw something called a memoir, and then it was Mike Birbiglia. It would be so infuriating. It’s like, ‘Who is this guy, and why does he have a memoir?’ David Letterman could write a memoir. Joan Rivers could. I’m just a nobody. I’m a comedian and a writer.

How many people do you know who have thrown up on the Scrambler or a carnival ride? A lot of people, is the answer.

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.

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.

I’m unable to do the thing that Broadway actors do in plays, sometimes for years. The same exact blocking, the same exact lines. I’m a little bit uncomfortable with that. Every night I’m looking for ways to try something else.

I end up talking about really mundane things with my fans, and then they’re kind of like, ‘This is boring. I want to go talk to somebody else.’ I think I bore my fans to death by over-talking to them.

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.

I was completely unqualified to get into Harvard. But then I went to my interview for Harvard, and the woman asked, ‘Why do you want to go here?’ And I took out all of my comedy writing samples that I had done. I couldn’t have been more delusional in terms of what I thought they wanted in a candidate for college.

Shooting a movie isn’t good for a sleep disorder.

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.’

There are comedians who focus on everything that is external. They focus on politics and the news, what’s going on in that city and that night.

I’ve found, being in Los Angeles, it’s like living in a live-action Planet Hollywood.

Growing up, I was discouraged from telling personal stories. My dad often used the phrase ‘Don’t tell anyone.’ But not about creepy things. I don’t want to lead you down the wrong path. It would be about insignificant things. Like, I wouldn’t make the soccer team, and my father would say, ‘Don’t tell anyone.’

Fortunately, I don’t talk about politics on stage.

In some sense, Comedy Central has made their audience into comedy connoisseurs.

If you’re asked something on a movie set and you say ‘I don’t know,’ you lose confidence in every department. What you need to say is ‘I’ll have that for you in five minutes.’

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.

I feel like everyone wants to make a movie that they feel passionate about watching.

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.

I find my fans are really funny people. Most comedians can’t say that about their fans.

People come to my shows on purpose as opposed to coming to a ‘comedy show.’ Which was always my goal.