Quote

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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Mike Birbiglia
Age: 46
Born: 1978
Born: June 20
Actor
Comedian
Executive Producer
Film Director
Screenwriter
Stand-Up Comedian
Asking
Habit
Spirit
Interrupting
Improvisation
Rule

More quotes by Mike Birbiglia

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I don't drink a lot. My family calls me an old soul. And my friends call me a pussy.
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Comedy is tragedy plus time, but the time is different for everybody.
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Bears are simultaneously so graceful and so strong. Bears know who they are, but they often don’t know who you are, which is why they kill you.
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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...
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You can always tell who went to catholic school, because they're atheists.
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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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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.
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Backup dancers are completely respectable. They're the studio musicians of dance.
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Art is socialism but life is capitalism.
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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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Success is fleeting. It may not have to do with you but how your work is received.
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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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I find my fans are really funny people. Most comedians can't say that about their fans.
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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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Life is unfair and improv is a great metaphor of that.
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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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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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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I'm a compulsive everything.
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...And so we go and I meet his parents. And it's a very strange thing meeting your girlfriend's boyfriend's parents for the first time. Part of you is angry for obvious reasons and part of you still wants to make a good impression. On a side note, they seemed in perfect health.
Mike Birbiglia