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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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Mike Birbiglia
Age: 46
Born: 1978
Born: June 20
Actor
Comedian
Executive Producer
Film Director
Screenwriter
Stand-Up Comedian
Time
Jobs
Comedian
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York
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More quotes by Mike Birbiglia

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Our fear leads us to say no all the time.
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I don't smoke a lot of pot anymore. No one wants to hang around a guy who ends every sentence with, Do you guys hate me?
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Backup dancers are completely respectable. They're the studio musicians of dance.
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Sex and pizza, they say, are similar. When it's good, it's good. When it's bad, you get it on your shirt.
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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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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 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].
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The list of fun and easily fixed brain diseases is very short.
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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.
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I think Mitch Hedberg is one of the great comedians of the past 20 years.
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The ability to workshop in stand-up comedy is incomparable to any art form, in my opinion.
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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.
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I love pizza so much, I would marry pizza, but it would just be an elaborate ploy to eat her whole family at the reception.
Mike Birbiglia
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Creepy people do the things that decent people want to do, but have decided are not a great idea.
Mike Birbiglia
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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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You can express love by calling out the truth out of the situation as opposed to dancing around it.
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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.
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I went to the doctor, and they found something in my bladder. And whenever they find something, it's never anything good like, We found something in your bladder AND IT'S SEASON TICKETS TO THE YANKEES!!
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Does anyone know a word that rhymes with shark?
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The key to eating healthy is not eating any food that has a TV commercial.
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