Top 245 Quotes & Sayings by Mike Birbiglia - Page 4

A girl offered me E at the club. 'Have you ever done E?' 'I watch E.'

Sometimes when my fans come up to me, they think it's going to be entertaining, like I'm going to tell jokes or do bits, and then instead of that 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.

Our fear leads us to say no all the time.

I can always go back to waiting tables, but I won't be very good at it. I'll never be good at it.

Sometimes when I do a joke and it doesn't get a lot of laughs, it kind of feels like I'm doing jazz. That's kinda cool because jazz is cool, but sometimes jazz sucks ... Maybe I'm the Kenny G of comedy.

I've been selfish over the years, and other people who have made it have too, but I can only speak for myself.

Failure's hard. There's no way around. Bombing on stage never feels great. You feel judged, you feel alone. But then when your performance works, it's transcendent.

In my twenties, I thought it was getting a sitcom. Then I got a sitcom pilot in my early thirties, and realized I didn't want it. It was a rude awakening. When it wasn't picked up, I was crushed, but then in retrospect I've made two films and produced three one-man shows since then. It's the luckiest thing that happened in my life.

Gillian [Jacobs] is brilliant, and it was Lena Dunham that recommended her. I didn't see her in the part, but Lena told me that Gillian can do anything. It turned out to be true.

In our culture right now, I want to take on this notion of what a singular success means. We think success is one thing, but it's actually a spectrum of where our life takes us.

You've got to remember that improvisers are writers and actors and directors all simultaneously. That's what's happening in real time because you're writing on your feet, and you are acting out the words and you are directing what the staging is. You're deciding what staging is.

I think the cleverness is inadvertent.

I have this habit of asking 'why do you want to do it?' and then interrupting them to say, 'here's why you want to do it.' Because it's in the 'yes...and' spirit [rule of improvisation].

My writing process is very feedback based - I listen to the audience. I try to understand what's connecting, what's not connecting... and then rewrite, and rewrite, and rewrite. Chris Gethard and I have been on the road a lot together. When we get on the bus at night, we talk about the jokes that didn't work and the joke possibilities that could work. I think this is a little different from other writers.

Elia Kazan. He wrote my favorite book about filmmaking, 'Elia Kazan: On Directing.' There is a thing in the book that I do every time, it's part of my production structure. He said when you're hiring an actor, ask them what draws them to the project, and don't lead them to the answer.

When I'm taking the subway to my improv shows I will be writing in my notebook different actions that I see people doing on the train whether it's eating yogurt or looking at where their stop is, or tripping or holding a baby. It's not preparing scenes and ideas as much as it is stoking your brain to think observantly. Just to place observations in your head, so that they are available somewhere.

I actually love 'Saturday Night Live,' like a sports fan watches their favorite team to see how they're doing. I know the players and the writers, I've known several people on that show for a number of years.

I figured out in my thirties it was about 'what can I contribute'? And what I figured out about that is creating something from scratch, and connecting it to people.

I try to think up material that might apply to the subjects they are studying. How many mitochondria does it take to power a cell? One. Because mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell. Not ready for prime time, that one.

Where art and business intersect is a challenging hurdle for a lot of people, reconciling the fact that not everyone is going to make it in the same way. Yeah, you have to be a little selfish, probably.

Success is fleeting. It may not have to do with you but how your work is received.

I feel like we can prove in real time the old trope that comedy is tragedy plus time.

I thought if I could do stand-up comedy well enough, I could parlay it back into films - like Charlie Chaplin and Woody Allen did. They merged principles of comedy and drama together, and that's what my first film really was, a stab at that kind of comedy.

You can express love by calling out the truth out of the situation as opposed to dancing around it.

You're always on duty because you're in a constant state of observation. That's one of the challenges of being a comedian. I think one of the other challenges is that, whether we like it or not, it's a profession that requires failure. It doesn't just encourage failure. It requires it because it's all trial and error. You need to know what doesn't work to know what works.

What I write is emotionally honest and truthful as the human experience can be, to make people feel less alone, or at least that's the hope.

Life is unfair and improv is a great metaphor of that.

I take the subway four times a day, or close to it. I just love the subway! My grandfather worked as an electrician when they were digging the subway.

I love Valentine's Day. When you're a kid everyone gets a Valentine. It's like 'TO TIM, NICE PANTS, LOVE SCOTT'. It's Valentines galore!

I was a screenwriting major in college, and really wanted to do that after I graduated, but there are no job listings for that, as we all know. I had many classmates that made it in the business, but stand-up comedy was my way in, and my first film 'Sleepwalk with Me' was based on those autobiographical experiences.

So I went to a club the other day, which is timely because my self esteem had been hovering right around 'normal' and I had been meaning to knock it down to negative 1000.

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.

When you're in a relationship with someone who's selfish, what keeps you in it is the fact that when they shine on you, it's this souped-up shine. And you feel like you're in the club. And you don't even know what club it is. You just know you want to stay in it.

I'm a compulsive everything.

All techniques of comedy are valid and interesting to me.

Art is socialism but life is capitalism.

I struggled with that notion early in my career. 'I know this is funny but nobody is laughing.' This thought occurred for years.

It had that kind of open-ended fear to it - like that feeling you get when you're driving and you see a cop. And you're not speeding. You don't have drugs. But you're just thinking, I hope he doesn't notice I'm driving.

When I was in college my improvisation troupe and I did a road trip to Chicago, and went to The Second City to see the classic 'Paradigm Lost' revue - with Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch, Scott Adsit and Kevin Dorff. It blew my mind, and proved to me you can do sketch comedy like you're doing 'Long Day's Journey into Night.' We could treat it like theater.

They really cut to the chase in the urologist's examination room, and I tried to laugh. If this office were a movie, it would have been rated R.

I think sometimes you don't understand how to convey an idea, depending on the moment you're living in.

Does anyone know a word that rhymes with shark?

I wrote on my desk wall when I was writing the film...'Art is socialism, but life is capitalism.' That's the hard thing in all of it if you expect to make a living.

The key is to do what you love.

My writing process is very feedback-based. When I do stand-up, I listen to the audience. I try to understand what's connecting, what's not connecting, and then rewrite, rewrite and rewrite.

Sometimes, when you want to be in a place so badly, you'll do anything.

Sex and pizza, they say, are similar. When it's good, it's good. When it's bad, you get it on your shirt.

I'm walking out my door to get like a Snapple, and someone's like 'yo man, you want to buy some heroin?' 'No... got any Snapple?'

I think serious situations actually make for the best kind of belly laughs. But theyre also the hardest to convert into comedy at the outset.

I'm a big fan of pastries the size of a baby that contain enough calories for a year. That seems like an effective use of time.

Awkwardness and feeling alienated are always going to be a part of comedy.

I was made to believe that my life was going to be fixed and it wasn't. I'm still the same loser who had flown to Los Angeles on my sister's frequent flier miles just six days before.

My problem with being in New York City is that you really can't make a living as a comedian. You can, but you have to also take writing jobs, which means less stage time.

My friends drink everywhere. They even drink at the laundromat. I tried drinking at the laundromat, and I thought I was in a submarine, navigating the Sea of White Panties with my Spanish-speaking crew. I was like, "Mrs. Sanchez, set the coordinates to Permanent Press! Give me some quarters and another drink! This place is starting to look like a laundromat."

I think Mitch Hedberg is one of the great comedians of the past 20 years.

I shouldn't say bad things about the illiterate, though..I should write it. That way they won't find out.

You need to know what doesn't work to know what works. It's especially true in improv and stand-up.

...And so we go and I meet his parents. And it's a very strange thing meeting your girlfriend's boyfriend's parents for the first time. Part of you is angry for obvious reasons and part of you still wants to make a good impression. On a side note, they seemed in perfect health.

Some people come up to me and say "You know, in Italy, it's pronounced Ber-beel-lia" And I say "Well, here in America, you're annoying..."

I like films that are so funny, dramatic and lifelike simultaneously, that you are laughing and cringing simultaneously all throughout the film.