Quotes from Mike Birbiglia

I would say that I love pizza so much that sometimes I eat pizza while I'm eating pizza. Like, I'm so content with myself with how it's going that I'm like, 'I should do this more,' not realizing that the mouth is full. I'm just cramming pizza into my mouth.

Once you start writing something obsessively, it's almost like someone has to rip it from your hands in order for you to put it down.

Comedy is tragedy plus time, but the time is different for everybody.

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.

It used to be that if you got on 'The Tonight Show,' your career was made. Now, if you're on 'The Tonight Show,' maybe 14 more people show up to your gig in Tulsa.

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.

I feel like people have more in common than the news reports. People getting along doesn't sell very well in the news. I find that to be deeply depressing.

The moment I walk into a room, I have kind of like the Terminator's tracking system for where the food is, and I can get there immediately.

I just don't give off a great first impression.

I'm incapable of feeling any joy.

People are making better and better small budge independent films these days.

I've read that Steven Wright's style was born out of genuine nervousness.

When I was in high school I saw Steven Wright, a brilliant one-liner comedian, and I thought: 'That's what I should do; I should write one-liners.' And I did. My first album is mostly one-liners.

I would be so mad if I saw something called a memoir, and then it was Mike Birbiglia. It would be so infuriating. It's like, 'Who is this guy, and why does he have a memoir?' David Letterman could write a memoir. Joan Rivers could. I'm just a nobody. I'm a comedian and a writer.

I listened to this interview once with Jerry Seinfeld that really influenced my comedy and all of my writing, which is that when you're starting out in comedy, it's the audience that tells you what's funny about you. And you need to listen to that and make a note of that.

I gravitated toward stand-up because there's no overhead. I mean, literally, there's no overhead: Often, you're outdoors performing in front of groups of people.

The Comedy Central CDs combined with the TV specials are what led to my stuff being traded and passed around, and a lot more people knowing my jokes than I thought.

I love Valentine's Day. When you're a kid everyone gets a Valentine. It's like 'TO TIM, NICE PANTS, LOVE SCOTT'. It's Valentines galore!

You know the expression, 'You're only as sick as your secrets?' I believe that, and I think I try to have my work live by that to a degree.

One of my favourite movies is 'Annie Hall' because it's about the silver lining of the break-up.

I was very much a late bloomer. That's not to say that girls didn't express interest in me from time to time, but I just, I did not know how to respond to that.

I was a screenwriting major at Georgetown, and I was in class with some really strong writers like Jonathan Nolan, who co-wrote 'The Dark Knight' with Chris, his brother. He wrote 'The Prestige,' the story for 'Memento.'

Sometimes, occasionally, people will make out in the audience, completely not aware that there's a human being onstage just yards away from them, who can see them. Sometimes people think that you're on television while you're onstage, so you're not even a person.

Someone said to me at a party once, 'Oh, yeah, you're a comedian? Then how come you're not funny now?' And I just wanted to say, 'Well, I'm just going to take this conversation we're having and then repeat that to strangers, and then that's the joke. You're the joke later.'