Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" Nothing that you want ever is what you think it is. "
Mike Birbiglia
Ever
You
Want
Related Quotes:
" 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. "
Mike Birbiglia
Know
Done
Back
" 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 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. "
Mike Birbiglia
Writing
You
Out
" 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. "
Mike Birbiglia
See
I Am
Behavior
" Pain is funnier than love. "
Mike Birbiglia
Than
Pain
Love
" Sometimes my fans are too nice. "
Mike Birbiglia
Too
Fans
Nice
" With a monologue, you can be unendingly elliptical. "
Mike Birbiglia
You
Monologue
" Prose is all about embellishing and describing. "
Mike Birbiglia
Prose
About
Describing
" I'm going to end up making twenty films if people let me. "
Mike Birbiglia
Twenty
Going
People
" I love Broadway shows. "
Mike Birbiglia
Shows
Love
I Love
" 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
" There's nothing funny the first time about telling a story about getting beat up and it makes you leave high school. "
Mike Birbiglia
High School
Time
Funny
" I consider Lena Dunham a comedian. "
Mike Birbiglia
Consider
Lena Dunham
Comedian
" 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
" Comedy is tragedy plus time, but the time is different for everybody. "
Mike Birbiglia
Different
Comedy
Plus
" Sometimes you'll have a heckler who's actually attempting to be supportive, but you don't realize it. Their way of expressing it is kind of confusing. "
Mike Birbiglia
Way
You
Realize
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Mike Birbiglia
Years
Director
Actor
" I love 'Bullets Over Broadway,' but I'm pretty sure Woody Allen hasn't killed somebody. "
Mike Birbiglia
Broadway
Bullets
Pretty
" I like 'Donnie Darko;' it's a cool take on dreams and sleep. "
Mike Birbiglia
Cool
Dreams
Take
" 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
" 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. "
Mike Birbiglia
Jokes
Myself
People
" It used to be that if you got on 'The Tonight Show,' your career was made. Now, if you're on 'The Tonight Show,' maybe 14 more people show up to your gig in Tulsa. "
Mike Birbiglia
More
Show
You
" It's interesting how sleepwalking in a certain way becomes an accumulation of your outside stimuli that's actually there and what's happening in your brain. "
Mike Birbiglia
Way
Brain
Interesting
" Sometimes, occasionally, people will make out in the audience, completely not aware that there's a human being onstage just yards away from them, who can see them. Sometimes people think that you're on television while you're onstage, so you're not even a person. "
Mike Birbiglia
You
Audience
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. "
Mike Birbiglia
Marriage
Romantic
Feel
" 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. "
Mike Birbiglia
Fat
You
Kind
" 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
" 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