Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" I'd much rather try and fail than talk about trying. "
Mike Birbiglia
Try
Fail
Much
Related Quotes:
" Backup dancers are completely respectable. They're the studio musicians of dance. "
Mike Birbiglia
Dance
Backup
Musicians
" You know the quickest way to get comedians to hate you? Do Letterman at age 24. "
Mike Birbiglia
Comedians
Hate
You
" One of my favorite comedies of all time is 'Terms of Endearment;' that's my pace. "
Mike Birbiglia
Comedies
Pace
Terms
" 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. "
Mike Birbiglia
Uncomfortable
Sometimes
Night
" 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
Bond
Know
Feel
" 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
Always
American
Life
" The way I view comedy clubs is, people are drinking, they're ordering food, they're out for the night, and there's also a person onstage talking. And with the theater, they came to the theater, and they're waiting to hear what you say. So you'd better have something to say. "
Mike Birbiglia
Night
Waiting
You
" Alienation, I suppose, can't be hackneyed because it will always exist. "
Mike Birbiglia
Because
Will
Alienation
" Jokes are so personal, and they bring us together in so many ways. "
Mike Birbiglia
Together
Us
Bring
" I like 'Donnie Darko;' it's a cool take on dreams and sleep. "
Mike Birbiglia
Cool
Dreams
Take
" 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
Marriage
Thought
Parents
" 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
New York
You
Rent
" 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
Walking
Think
Memories
" 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
Lose
You
Amazing
" The moment I walk into a room, I have kind of like the Terminator's tracking system for where the food is, and I can get there immediately. "
Mike Birbiglia
Walk
System
Food
" My dad goes through war novels like I go through boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. "
Mike Birbiglia
War
Go
Through
" Film is so immersive. "
Mike Birbiglia
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.' "
Mike Birbiglia
Bad
Think
You
" My first car was, as depicted in 'Sleepwalk with Me,' my mother's '92 Volvo station wagon that had 80,000 miles on it, and I had put 40,000 miles on it, so by the time it retired it had 120,000, and I basically killed it. It served me well, and my mechanic was always very angry with me because I just didn't properly care for it. "
Mike Birbiglia
Mother
Me
Care
" People are making better and better small budge independent films these days. "
Mike Birbiglia
Days
Independent
People
" 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
Driving
You
Today
" 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. "
Mike Birbiglia
Like
Nobody
Mad
" 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. "
Mike Birbiglia
You
Writing
College
" Louis C.K. directs his show, which is very much like a series of short films. "
Mike Birbiglia
Show
Short Films
Much
" Nobody knows the life of the working comic. "
Mike Birbiglia
Comic
Life
Working
" 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
Like
Name
Away
" 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. "
Mike Birbiglia
Place
People
You
" 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
Me
Money
Week
" 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
Angry
Writing
Think
" When I was in college, I wanted to write for 'Late Night With Conan O'Brien,' and I was an intern there. "
Mike Birbiglia
Write
College
Intern