Top 245 Quotes & Sayings by Mike Birbiglia
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American comedian Mike Birbiglia.
Last updated on November 3, 2024.
The one thing you're most reluctant to tell. That's where the comedy is.
Directing a movie is a little bit like being back in student government and putting on the homecoming dance. You're like, 'You put up the streamers, and you hire the DJ, and you get the punch bowl.' Some people are just like, 'This dance sucks.' And you're like, 'No no, this dance is awesome!' You have to be really positive.
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.
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.
Creepy people do the things that decent people want to do, but have decided are not a great idea.
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.
When I moved to New York, I was wide-eyed. I was nice to everyone, which comedians hate.
The ability to workshop in stand-up comedy is incomparable to any art form, in my opinion.
You have to be delusional to be a comedian.
Everything about starting out in comedy is pride-swallowing, from handing out fliers to bombing in front of audiences.
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.
I feel that marriage can lead to the ultimate rejection and failure and divorce and things we all fear.
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.
The Comedy Central CDs combined with the TV specials are what led to my stuff being traded and passed around, and a lot more people knowing my jokes than I thought.
The way I view comedy clubs is, people are drinking, they're ordering food, they're out for the night, and there's also a person onstage talking. And with the theater, they came to the theater, and they're waiting to hear what you say. So you'd better have something to say.
Backup dancers are completely respectable. They're the studio musicians of dance.
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.
I have a following, but it's small. I have this level of fame where people spot me in the airport, consistently, but they always think they're the only one who ever has. People will think they win a prize when they recognize me.
I always have the best story at the party. Anyone telling a story at a party is like, 'No, no, you've got to listen to my story!' I'm like, 'Step aside, everybody. I'm going to blow the doors off this place.'
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.
You know the quickest way to get comedians to hate you? Do Letterman at age 24.
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.
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.'
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.
With a monologue, you can be unendingly elliptical.
I love pizza. I want to marry it, but it would just be to eat her family at the wedding.
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.'
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.'
I just don't give off a 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.
I've read that Steven Wright's style was born out of genuine nervousness.
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.
Sometimes people say, 'You're the best at digressions.' And that's actually a real compliment to me.
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.
The economy of film forces you to make choices.
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.
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.
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.
How many people do you know who have thrown up on the Scrambler or a carnival ride? A lot of people, is the answer.
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.
In some sense, Comedy Central has made their audience into comedy connoisseurs.
My last name has the word 'big' in it. It seems like a logical progression that if you shed away the Bir and the lia, I'll just be Big.
People come to my shows on purpose as opposed to coming to a 'comedy show.' Which was always my goal.
Fortunately, I don't talk about politics on stage.
I never looked at my parents' marriage or really anyone who had been married more than 30 years and thought, 'I gotta get me some of that!'
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.
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.
Film is so immersive.
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.
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.
I'd much rather try and fail than talk about trying.
I feel like being a door person was like college in a sense. I could watch comedy on a professional level seven nights a week without paying, and they would pay me a nominal amount of money to be there.
I drank the Kool-Aid of being a network star. Once it didn't happen, I realized it wasn't the best version of my comedy.
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.'
Shooting a movie isn't good for a sleep disorder.
I grew up in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts and went to college in Washington D.C.
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.
Every sleep doctor I've talked to said it was an urban legend that you shouldn't wake up a sleepwalker. All that will happen is that you will get condescended to.
When you're in high school, you can't even imagine the concept of what the rest of your life even means.
When I started out, I really struggled as a comic because no one knew who I was, and sometimes I was telling stories, so it would take a while for people to get on board for things.
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