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" 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

Doors

You

Story

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" Making a film is beyond exciting. It's so exciting, it's exhausting. "

" 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.' "

" Someone said to me at a party once, 'Oh, yeah, you're a comedian? Then how come you're not funny now?' And I just wanted to say, 'Well, I'm just going to take this conversation we're having and then repeat that to strangers, and then that's the joke. You're the joke later.' "

Mike Birbiglia

Conversation

You

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

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

" I actually wasn't really the class clown growing up. The class clown was always the mean guy who walked up and was like, 'You're fat. You're gay. I'm outta here!' I was always more kind of awkward and introspective. "

" You have to be delusional to be a comedian. "

" In terms of comedy, there was a Seinfeldian era of comedy that I love but got played out. Seinfeld was great, but then after him it was people acting like Seinfeld and making observations that we felt like we'd kind of heard before, and then you're seeing Seinfeldian comedy in commercials. Suddenly everything is observational funniness. "

" I feel like being a door person was like college in a sense. I could watch comedy on a professional level seven nights a week without paying, and they would pay me a nominal amount of money to be there. "

Mike Birbiglia

Money

Week

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

" Starbucks is the last public space with chairs. It's a shower for homeless people. And it's a place you can write all day. The baristas don't glare at you. They don't even look at you. "

" The list of fun and easily-fixed brain diseases is very short. "

" Pain is funnier than love. "

" 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. "

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

" I consider Lena Dunham a comedian. "

" Louis C.K. directs his show, which is very much like a series of short films. "

" Once you've made your first feature, you know what you can do wrong and how hard it is to shoot a feature. Before you do it, you just don't know how hard it is. Once you've done it, when you're writing a second one, it's almost like you're preparing, and it's almost holding you back. "

" When I was growing up, I didn't know who Jewish people were, what it was to be Jewish. "

Mike Birbiglia

Know

People

" You can't go to medical school and come out and be like, 'I'm going to be a dog catcher.' That would be so pointless. "

Mike Birbiglia

You

" I think your tendency when you play yourself is to accentuate something about you that you think is the funny thing about you. "

" Media is so weird; everything is so accessible now. It used to be this thing where, if you did something on 'This American Life,' this predates me, but when David Sedaris did it, for example, it would just play, people who heard it heard it, and then the book would come out a year later, and people would be like, 'Ahh, I kind of remember that.' "

Mike Birbiglia

American

Life

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" 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

Feel

People

" I like 'Donnie Darko;' it's a cool take on dreams and sleep. "

" When I was starting out, I thought I would go into comedy and there would be a mentor, like the Philip Seymour Hoffman character in 'Almost Famous,' in my life, and there just wasn't. It was really frustrating for me because I desired that so much. "

Mike Birbiglia

My Life

Thought

" 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. "

" 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. "