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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...

Mike Birbiglia

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Mike Birbiglia
Age: 46
Born: 1978
Born: June 20
Actor
Comedian
Executive Producer
Film Director
Screenwriter
Stand-Up Comedian
Wells
Come
Well
Pronounced
People
Italy
Annoying
Humor
Funny
America

More quotes by Mike Birbiglia

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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.
Mike Birbiglia
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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.
Mike Birbiglia
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My family isn't really Italian. We're more like Olive Garden Italian.
Mike Birbiglia
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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.
Mike Birbiglia
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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].
Mike Birbiglia
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Sometimes, when you want to be in a place so badly, you'll do anything.
Mike Birbiglia
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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.
Mike Birbiglia
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Awkwardness and feeling alienated are always going to be a part of comedy.
Mike Birbiglia
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Backup dancers are completely respectable. They're the studio musicians of dance.
Mike Birbiglia
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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.
Mike Birbiglia
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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.
Mike Birbiglia
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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.
Mike Birbiglia
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I've read that Steven Wright's style was born out of genuine nervousness.
Mike Birbiglia
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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.
Mike Birbiglia
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Our fear leads us to say no all the time.
Mike Birbiglia
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What I really need is a woman who loves me for my money but doesn't understand math.
Mike Birbiglia
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Fortunately, I don't talk about politics on stage.
Mike Birbiglia
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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.
Mike Birbiglia
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Art is socialism but life is capitalism.
Mike Birbiglia
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I struggled with that notion early in my career. 'I know this is funny but nobody is laughing.' This thought occurred for years.
Mike Birbiglia