Quotes from Mike Birbiglia

One of my favorite comedies of all time is 'Terms of Endearment;' that's my pace.

Louis C.K. directs his show, which is very much like a series of short films.

There's nothing funny the first time about telling a story about getting beat up and it makes you leave high school.

Sometimes people say, 'You're the best at digressions.' And that's actually a real compliment to me.

When I met my wife, I was a working comic, so the first week we went out, she saw me perform, and it was very clear what I do.

My first car was, as depicted in 'Sleepwalk with Me,' my mother's '92 Volvo station wagon that had 80,000 miles on it, and I had put 40,000 miles on it, so by the time it retired it had 120,000, and I basically killed it. It served me well, and my mechanic was always very angry with me because I just didn't properly care for it.

Every sleep doctor I've talked to said it was an urban legend that you shouldn't wake up a sleepwalker. All that will happen is that you will get condescended to.

I actually wasn't really the class clown growing up. The class clown was always the mean guy who walked up and was like, 'You're fat. You're gay. I'm outta here!' I was always more kind of awkward and introspective.

In real life, I first started sleep walking in high school because that was when this concept of getting into college first appeared. I had this moment of, 'Oh! This is going to affect the rest of my life.'

I think that my regrets mostly have to do with my relationship with my ex-girlfriend. Every once in a while, you get those flashback memories of conversations you had with your exes, and you just, like, wince when you're walking down the street. Something occurs to you, 'Oh, no, I said that.'

I love Broadway shows.

Directing a movie is a little bit like being back in student government and putting on the homecoming dance. You're like, 'You put up the streamers, and you hire the DJ, and you get the punch bowl.' Some people are just like, 'This dance sucks.' And you're like, 'No no, this dance is awesome!' You have to be really positive.

In terms of comedy, there was a Seinfeldian era of comedy that I love but got played out. Seinfeld was great, but then after him it was people acting like Seinfeld and making observations that we felt like we'd kind of heard before, and then you're seeing Seinfeldian comedy in commercials. Suddenly everything is observational funniness.

If I dream that I'm directing, it's not a film, it's like a commercial for cotton candy, and I've got four feet of cotton candy all around me that I've got to break through, like a brick wall or a fortress.

It's interesting how sleepwalking in a certain way becomes an accumulation of your outside stimuli that's actually there and what's happening in your brain.

Sometimes you'll have a heckler who's actually attempting to be supportive, but you don't realize it. Their way of expressing it is kind of confusing.

Alienation, I suppose, can't be hackneyed because it will always exist.

What I really need is a woman who loves me for my money but doesn't understand math.

I can always go back to waiting tables, but I won't be very good at it. I'll never be good at it.

I'm generally so disoriented during the week about what I'm doing and where I am - I travel a lot - that when I'm home on a Sunday, I typically try to sleep in as much as I can.

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.

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.

I went to a funeral recently, and they handed out Kleenex before the funeral. Which I thought was cocky.

I shouldn't say bad things about the illiterate, though..I should write it. That way they won't find out.