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In our culture right now, I want to take on this notion of what a singular success means. We think success is one thing, but it's actually a spectrum of where our life takes us.

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
Think
Actually
Thinking
Success
Life
Means
Culture
Take
Singular
Right
Spectrum
Mean
Notion
Thing
Takes

More quotes by Mike Birbiglia

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I think the reason why I'm so alluring to networks is because on the surface I'm like a quintessential relatable, boring white guy. A great many sitcoms have been anchored by a boring white guy, so I feel like what they want to mine from me are my more generic qualities.
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
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How many people do you know who have thrown up on the Scrambler or a carnival ride? A lot of people, is the answer.
Mike Birbiglia
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The ability to workshop in stand-up comedy is incomparable to any art form, in my opinion.
Mike Birbiglia
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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.
Mike Birbiglia
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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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I'm a whitebread cracker. That's my favorite white person slur: whitebread. The other day, someone came up to me and said, What's up, whitebread? And I was like, That's not even an insult. That's just my race plus a food. I can do that, too, black bean soup! Stay out of this, Asian chicken platter!
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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I always try to attack the most honest issues I can in my comedy.
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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A girl offered me E at the club. 'Have you ever done E?' 'I watch E.'
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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Our fear leads us to say no all the time.
Mike Birbiglia
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I take the subway four times a day, or close to it. I just love the subway! My grandfather worked as an electrician when they were digging the subway.
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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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.
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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I just don't give off a great first impression.
Mike Birbiglia
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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.
Mike Birbiglia
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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.
Mike Birbiglia