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" My wife and I always comment that our lives are relatively mundane. She's a writer as well, I'm a writer, we spend most of our time writing, and kind of going to yoga in Brooklyn. "

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" 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

" 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. "

" 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

" Jokes are so personal, and they bring us together in so many ways. "

Mike Birbiglia

Together

Bring

" I couldn't recommend more that people put themselves in a situation where they can see a lot of work that they admire, and for free. "

" 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. "

" I love 'Bullets Over Broadway,' but I'm pretty sure Woody Allen hasn't killed somebody. "

" Comedy is tragedy plus time, but the time is different for everybody. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" I've read that Steven Wright's style was born out of genuine nervousness. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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 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. "

" The Hollywood model is to develop scripts for 10 years, sell them, transfer them, attach this actor, then attach a director. This isn't what I'm about. I'm much more of a creator and a doer. "

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

" I am intimidating no one in America. No one feels like they are below me in any way. They feel like they are absolutely either at or above my level and 100-percent comfortable talking to me. "

" 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

" 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.' "

" 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

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

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

" The economy of film forces you to make choices. "

" 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. "

" Prose is all about embellishing and describing. "

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

Mike Birbiglia

You

Monologue