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" I've read that Steven Wright's style was born out of genuine nervousness. "
Mike Birbiglia
Read
Style
Steven
Related Quotes:
" 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
Kind
Comedy
Think
" 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.' "
Mike Birbiglia
Soccer
Team
Father
" 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
Up
Ride
People
" The list of fun and easily-fixed brain diseases is very short. "
Mike Birbiglia
Fun
Short
List
" You have to be delusional to be a comedian. "
Mike Birbiglia
Delusional
Comedian
You
" Fortunately, I don't talk about politics on stage. "
Mike Birbiglia
About
Talk
Stage
" I've found, being in Los Angeles, it's like living in a live-action Planet Hollywood. "
Mike Birbiglia
Hollywood
Like
Los Angeles
" I love Broadway shows. "
Mike Birbiglia
Shows
Love
I Love
" I've actually always wanted to write like a one-person show that was sort of a romantic comedy - a show that was kind of cynical about romance and marriage but ultimately embraced it. Because I feel like comedy is always cynical, inherently, because it's contrarian. "
Mike Birbiglia
Marriage
Romantic
Feel
" 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
Strong
Who
Class
" 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. "
Mike Birbiglia
Perception
Construction
Culture
" I consider Lena Dunham a comedian. "
Mike Birbiglia
Consider
Lena Dunham
Comedian
" 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
Cotton
Feet
Me
" In some sense, Comedy Central has made their audience into comedy connoisseurs. "
Mike Birbiglia
Some
Audience
Comedy
" 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
" 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.' "
Mike Birbiglia
You
Say
Need
" 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
Time
Long
Long Time
" 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
Me
Week
Wife
" Comedy is tragedy plus time, but the time is different for everybody. "
Mike Birbiglia
Different
Comedy
Plus
" 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. "
Mike Birbiglia
Me
Want
You
" In real life, I first started sleep walking in high school because that was when this concept of getting into college first appeared. I had this moment of, 'Oh! This is going to affect the rest of my life.' "
Mike Birbiglia
Life
College
Moment
" Shooting a movie isn't good for a sleep disorder. "
Mike Birbiglia
Movie
Good
Disorder
" When I was in high school I saw Steven Wright, a brilliant one-liner comedian, and I thought: 'That's what I should do; I should write one-liners.' And I did. My first album is mostly one-liners. "
Mike Birbiglia
High School
High
Thought
" 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
Homework
Down
People
" 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
" I love Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel. "
Mike Birbiglia
Jimmy
Love
I Love
" 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
" 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
I Am
Home
Week
" 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
Same
Hang
Musicians
" I would say that I love pizza so much that sometimes I eat pizza while I'm eating pizza. Like, I'm so content with myself with how it's going that I'm like, 'I should do this more,' not realizing that the mouth is full. I'm just cramming pizza into my mouth. "
Mike Birbiglia
Say
Mouth
Myself