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" 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.' "

" It's a difficult line to tread, where sometimes you go to the movies or you watch someone do publicity for movies or TV shows, and they do all the jokes that are good in the promotion of it, and you see the movie, and you're like, 'I kind of get it already. I'm not that psyched about it.' "

Mike Birbiglia

Movies

Someone

You

" With a monologue, you can be unendingly elliptical. "

Mike Birbiglia

You

Monologue

" 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. "

" Dopamine is a chemical released in your brain and your body when you sleep that paralyzes your body so you don't act out your dreams. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

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

" 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.' "

Mike Birbiglia

Concert

Opening

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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

" 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. "

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

" There's nothing funny the first time about telling a story about getting beat up and it makes you leave high school. "

" 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

Sometimes

Cook

" Shooting a movie isn't good for a sleep disorder. "

" I am diagnosed with what's called 'REM behavior disorder.' As far as the disorder goes, there's no cure, but it's going pretty well as far as these things go. I see a sleep doctor, take medication, etc. "

" Nothing that you want ever is what you think it is. "

" 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

" You know the quickest way to get comedians to hate you? Do Letterman at age 24. "

" 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.' "

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

" 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

Care

" 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. "

" I've yet to write a stand-up show that isn't autobiographical. "

" 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. "

" Fortunately, I don't talk about politics on stage. "

" 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. "