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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My family isn't really Italian. We're more like Olive Garden Italian.
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I just don't give off a great first impression.
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I think Mitch Hedberg is one of the great comedians of the past 20 years.
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Fortunately, I don't talk about politics on stage.
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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.
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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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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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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 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.
Mike Birbiglia
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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.'
Mike Birbiglia
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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.
Mike Birbiglia
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You can express love by calling out the truth out of the situation as opposed to dancing around it.
Mike Birbiglia
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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.
Mike Birbiglia
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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.
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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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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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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Our fear leads us to say no all the time.
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've read that Steven Wright's style was born out of genuine nervousness.
Mike Birbiglia