My dad goes through war novels like I go through boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
— Mike Birbiglia
Comedy is tragedy plus time, but the time is different for everybody.
Alienation, I suppose, can't be hackneyed because it will always exist.
I like 'Donnie Darko;' it's a cool take on dreams and sleep.
One of my favorite comedies of all time is 'Terms of Endearment;' that's my pace.
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.
The ability to workshop in stand-up comedy is incomparable to any art form, in my opinion.
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 almost can't even put to words how happy I am that I got married.
One of my favourite movies is 'Annie Hall' because it's about the silver lining of the break-up.
Louis C.K. directs his show, which is very much like a series of short films.
I love 'Bullets Over Broadway,' but I'm pretty sure Woody Allen hasn't killed somebody.
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.'
Comedy unites, it doesn't divide!
The list of fun and easily-fixed brain diseases is very short.
I think that my regrets mostly have to do with my relationship with my ex-girlfriend. Every once in a while, you get those flashback memories of conversations you had with your exes, and you just, like, wince when you're walking down the street. Something occurs to you, 'Oh, no, I said that.'
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.
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.'
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.
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'm incapable of feeling any joy.
When I was growing up, I didn't know who Jewish people were, what it was to be Jewish.
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.
Nobody knows the life of the working comic.
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.'
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.
I feel that marriage can lead to the ultimate rejection and failure and divorce and things we all fear.
I feel like everyone wants to make a movie that they feel passionate about watching.
If you tried to sell Mike Birbiglia as a concept, no one would buy it.
When you're in high school, you can't even imagine the concept of what the rest of your life even means.
Fortunately, I don't talk about politics on stage.
'Terminator 2' is so good. I love it.
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.
Once you know how to make a movie, you can't not make a movie.
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.
Backup dancers are completely respectable. They're the studio musicians of dance.
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.
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 was raised Catholic, and then I kind of wandered away somewhere in high-school. I never got confirmed, which is a big deal.
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.
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.'
There's nothing funny the first time about telling a story about getting beat up and it makes you leave high school.
I think your tendency when you play yourself is to accentuate something about you that you think is the funny thing about you.
I consider Lena Dunham a comedian.
First time films are hard. Even with some of the greatest directors, you look back at their first film, and you are just going, 'That movie is kind of bad.'
Nothing that you want ever is what you think it 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.
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.
What I always studied in screenwriting from my mentor John Glavin was that the most interesting characters are characters with shades of gray.
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.
