Mike Birbiglia Quotes - Page 4

The people who are the worst at news, who kind of engage in what I call the World Wrestling of news, have kind of set the bar for where news is.

I feel like everyone wants to make a movie that they feel passionate about watching.

Two Drink Mike enjoys dancing and knows a magic trick. Whereas, No Drink Mike enjoys biographies, and has serious opinions on wildlife. And Five Drink Mike... dances with wildlife.

I performed for the U.S. troops in Guantanamo Bay. And signed autographs for people who've been gone from America for so long they didn't realize that I'm not famous.

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.

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 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.

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.

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..."

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.

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.

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.

I'm a compulsive everything.

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.

The key is to do what you love.

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

All techniques of comedy are valid and interesting to me.

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.

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

I think the cleverness is inadvertent.

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

Does anyone know a word that rhymes with shark?

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.

...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.

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