Quote

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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Mike Birbiglia
Age: 46
Born: 1978
Born: June 20
Actor
Comedian
Executive Producer
Film Director
Screenwriter
Stand-Up Comedian
Years
Notion
Early
Career
Careers
Laughing
Nobody
Funny
Struggled
Thought
Occurred

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The list of fun and easily fixed brain diseases is very short.
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My family isn't really Italian. We're more like Olive Garden Italian.
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I've been selfish over the years, and other people who have made it have too, but I can only speak for myself.
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I think Mitch Hedberg is one of the great comedians of the past 20 years.
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It had that kind of open-ended fear to it - like that feeling you get when you're driving and you see a cop. And you're not speeding. You don't have drugs. But you're just thinking, I hope he doesn't notice I'm driving.
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Life is unfair and improv is a great metaphor of that.
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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've read that Steven Wright's style was born out of genuine nervousness.
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I couldn't recommend more that people put themselves in a situation where they can see a lot of work that they admire, and for free.
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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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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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Success is fleeting. It may not have to do with you but how your work is received.
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Backup dancers are completely respectable. They're the studio musicians of dance.
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The key is to do what you love.
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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.
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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 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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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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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.
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The key to eating healthy is not eating any food that has a TV commercial.
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