Mike Birbiglia Quotes
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Falling in love is a completely transcendent experience. It's like eating pizza-flavored ice cream
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I think spending a lot of time with my mom, who's a talker and a storyteller, and my dad, who has kind of a soft-spoken, understated sense of humor, I think that's how I became what I am, which is sort of an understated storyteller.
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I feel like we can prove in real time the old trope that comedy is tragedy plus time.
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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.
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I used to think I was a little unstable, and then I met every girl I've ever dated.
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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."
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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.
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I find my fans are really funny people. Most comedians can't say that about their fans.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I think the cleverness is inadvertent.
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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!"
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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.
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I feel like people have more in common than the news reports.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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There is no such thing as #1 in art.
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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.'
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The list of fun and easily fixed brain diseases is very short.
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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.
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Alienation, I suppose, can't be hackneyed because it will always exist.
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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!'
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I've been selfish over the years, and other people who have made it have too, but I can only speak for myself.
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