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Success is fleeting. It may not have to do with you but how your work is received.

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
Work
Fleeting
Received
Success
May

More quotes by Mike Birbiglia

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I was made to believe that my life was going to be fixed and it wasn't. I'm still the same loser who had flown to Los Angeles on my sister's frequent flier miles just six days before.
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 just don't give off a great first impression.
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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I'm a big fan of pastries the size of a baby that contain enough calories for a year. That seems like an effective use of time.
Mike Birbiglia
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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
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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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Awkwardness and feeling alienated are always going to be a part of comedy.
Mike Birbiglia
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What I really need is a woman who loves me for my money but doesn't understand math.
Mike Birbiglia
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I almost can't even put to words how happy I am that I got married.
Mike Birbiglia
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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.
Mike Birbiglia
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I feel like people have more in common than the news reports.
Mike Birbiglia
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Everyone tries to get you to dance at clubs. They come up to you and say You gotta dance! you gotta dance! And then I dance, and they're like, Not like that!
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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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.
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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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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I'm a compulsive everything.
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 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.
Mike Birbiglia