Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" 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
Like
You
Go
Related Quotes:
" 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
" 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. "
Mike Birbiglia
People
See
Film
" 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. "
Mike Birbiglia
Kind
Writing
Wife
" 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. "
Mike Birbiglia
Voice
Good Friends
Good
" I'm incapable of feeling any joy. "
Mike Birbiglia
Any
Joy
Incapable
" 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
" You have to be delusional to be a comedian. "
Mike Birbiglia
Delusional
Comedian
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
" 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
" 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. "
Mike Birbiglia
Kind
End
Death
" 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
" I love 'Bullets Over Broadway,' but I'm pretty sure Woody Allen hasn't killed somebody. "
Mike Birbiglia
Broadway
Bullets
Pretty
" I've yet to write a stand-up show that isn't autobiographical. "
Mike Birbiglia
Show
Autobiographical
Write
" Ultimately, jokes are this really special thing that we can all share. It's exciting to have basically a thousand people in a room together that can laugh at the same time, but I think of it almost as, like, a religious experience. "
Mike Birbiglia
Like
Experience
Time
" 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
Me
" Fortunately, I don't talk about politics on stage. "
Mike Birbiglia
About
Talk
Stage
" In terms of comedy, there was a Seinfeldian era of comedy that I love but got played out. Seinfeld was great, but then after him it was people acting like Seinfeld and making observations that we felt like we'd kind of heard before, and then you're seeing Seinfeldian comedy in commercials. Suddenly everything is observational funniness. "
Mike Birbiglia
Comedy
Acting
You
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Prose is all about embellishing and describing. "
Mike Birbiglia
Prose
About
Describing
" 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. "
Mike Birbiglia
Lost
College
Career
" I just don't give off a great first impression. "
Mike Birbiglia
Off
Great
First Impression
" I gravitated toward stand-up because there's no overhead. I mean, literally, there's no overhead: Often, you're outdoors performing in front of groups of people. "
Mike Birbiglia
Outdoors
Because
You
" 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
" 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
" You know the expression, 'You're only as sick as your secrets?' I believe that, and I think I try to have my work live by that to a degree. "
Mike Birbiglia
Know
Live
Sick
" What I always studied in screenwriting from my mentor John Glavin was that the most interesting characters are characters with shades of gray. "
Mike Birbiglia
Interesting
Most
Mentor
" 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