Top 245 Quotes & Sayings by Mike Birbiglia - Page 3

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

I'm incapable of feeling any joy.

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.

There's something about small venues that's amazing for developing material. It's almost like you can not only hear people's response, but you can understand it. In bigger venues you lose that, but you gain this sense of camaraderie in the audience.

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

I think your tendency when you play yourself is to accentuate something about you that you think is the funny thing about you.

I feel like people have more in common than the news reports. People getting along doesn't sell very well in the news. I find that to be deeply depressing.

I think because I've been working in front of audiences for so many years, I'm able to take in the input, good or bad, and just say, 'This is the part I agree with that you're saying, and these are the parts I don't agree with.'

One of my favorite comedies of all time is 'Terms of Endearment;' that's my pace.

When I met my wife, I was a working comic, so the first week we went out, she saw me perform, and it was very clear what I do.

Nobody knows the life of the working comic.

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.

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

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.

I like 'Donnie Darko;' it's a cool take on dreams and sleep.

Alienation, I suppose, can't be hackneyed because it will always exist.

I was raised Catholic, and then I kind of wandered away somewhere in high-school. I never got confirmed, which is a big deal.

My dad goes through war novels like I go through boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

I almost can't even put to words how happy I am that I got married.

I consider Lena Dunham a comedian.

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.

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.

When I was growing up, I didn't know who Jewish people were, what it was to be Jewish.

Directing your first film is like showing up to the field trip in seventh grade, getting on the bus, and making an announcement, 'So today I'm driving the bus.' And everybody's like, 'What?' And you're like, 'I'm gonna drive the bus.' And they're like, 'But you don't know how to drive the bus.'

Random people, celebrities of note come to your shows over the years, and I've had some really strange ones. Like the guy from Kiss. Gene Simmons has literally been in the audience at my shows, like, four times. I don't know if he knows me; he's just a big fan of comedy.

When I made 'Sleepwalk with Me,' many people asked me if was a novelty thing, a one-off. But this is the goal, I'm just hitting it 12 years after I thought I would.

I don't drink a lot. My family calls me an old soul. And my friends call me a pussy.

Everyone tries to get you to dance at clubs. They come up to you and say "You gotta dance! you gotta dance!" And then I dance, and they're like, "Not like that!"

I didn't realize how good I was with technology until I met my parents... my dad told me "You're good; you should be a computer programmer." I said, "You're bad... you should be a caveman."

Eugene Mirman is the Andy Warhol of comedy. People look to him for what's next in comedy, and he emails these people back promptly. The Will to Whatevs put me in a great mood because I was laughing out loud. Alone. That's hard to do.

What I really need is a woman who loves me for my money but doesn't understand math.

I went to a funeral recently, and they handed out Kleenex before the funeral. Which I thought was cocky.

I went to the doctor, and they found something in my bladder. And whenever they find something, it's never anything good like, "We found something in your bladder AND IT'S SEASON TICKETS TO THE YANKEES!!"

I was an altar boy as a kid. And the answer is no.

There is no such thing as #1 in art.

I read recently that women still make 30% less than men in the workplace. Which I think is fine, cause if we didn't make 30% more, you guys would marry each other.

Bears are simultaneously so graceful and so strong. Bears know who they are, but they often don’t know who you are, which is why they kill you.

I don't smoke a lot of pot anymore. No one wants to hang around a guy who ends every sentence with, "Do you guys hate me?"

I got an E-Trade account. Turns out I can turn $1,000 into $420 in less than a week. Sure, I had to pay some fees.

Falling in love is a completely transcendent experience. It's like eating pizza-flavored ice cream

I love pizza so much, I would marry pizza, but it would just be an elaborate ploy to eat her whole family at the reception.

Saturday night is perfect for writers because other people have "plans.

The list of fun and easily fixed brain diseases is very short.

I think if anything, the fact that it's popular right now makes me go: "Well, I guess I'm going to start doing something else then in the next few years." I dunno, it almost feels hackneyed at this point. To start a premise by saying, "I did this awkward thing." But then again, awkwardness and feeling alienated are always going to be a part of comedy. Alienation, I suppose, can't be hackneyed because it will always exist.

When I was a kid I would write songs, little plays, and poetry in school. If you're an adult and you're a poet, it's all about love and pain, but if you're a kid it's, "Does anyone know a word that rhymes with shark?"

I didn't realize how good I was with computers until I met my parents.

I feel like people have more in common than the news reports. People getting along doesn't sell very well in the news. I find that to be deeply depressing. I don't even talk about it on stage, because it would take too long to explain. I'd have to spend an hour on it to get people to understand what I'm saying because it's so instantly polarizing. Because cable news has kind of set up a construct where you're for or against something immediately. So if I said something about it, people would be for or against me immediately. And I don't want that.

I think our culture views success as visibility, being seen as being successful. Whereas I've learned that success is rooted in helping and connecting to other people, and knowing where you can contribute. I've kind of spent my thirties doing that, because in my twenties I was seeking any kind of success.

I thought, Hey, maybe these people shouldn't be making up holidays to drink more. Maybe if they drank less they might be able to title their newspaper articles more specifically. For example, I would title this last article "Drunk Driver Hits Drunk Walker Drunkety-Drunk I'm So Drunk."

I'm a whitebread cracker. That's my favorite white person slur: "whitebread". The other day, someone came up to me and said, "What's up, whitebread?" And I was like, "That's not even an insult. That's just my race plus a food. I can do that, too, black bean soup! Stay out of this, Asian chicken platter!"

Someone stole my wallet last week. The guy called me up and he was mad at me. He was like 'you gotta get your finances together. You got no cash, your credit cards are maxed out. You don't even have minutes on your calling card. I had to use my card to call you.'

You can always tell who went to catholic school, because they're atheists.

The key to eating healthy is not eating any food that has a TV commercial.

There are so many people who are clever. There are 8000 people at Princeton who are more clever than the three of us at this table. BUT, we have the ability to give something that they don't have...which is us.

To succeed in comedy you ultimately have to put in the hours and get lucky - The amount of people who are able to break through is so small a fraction of the amount of people trying.

My family isn't really Italian. We're more like Olive Garden Italian.

I think the reason why I'm so alluring to networks is because on the surface I'm like a quintessential relatable, boring white guy. A great many sitcoms have been anchored by a boring white guy, so I feel like what they want to mine from me are my more generic qualities.

I used to think I was a little unstable, and then I met every girl I've ever dated.

It was a hard name having growing up as a child. Some kids would call me names like "Birbiglebug" and "Birbibliography" and "Faggot". Some were more clever than others.

I will say what I aspire to is a consistency in making films, to direct something every couple of years.