Quotes from Mike Birbiglia

I feel like everyone wants to make a movie that they feel passionate about watching.

Sometimes, when you want to be in a place so badly, you'll do anything.

I was raised Catholic, and then I kind of wandered away somewhere in high-school. I never got confirmed, which is a big deal.

With a monologue, you can be unendingly elliptical.

I sometimes think of not doing Twitter or Facebook anymore, but that's how people find their favorite bands and comedians.

I've actually always wanted to write like a one-person show that was sort of a romantic comedy - a show that was kind of cynical about romance and marriage but ultimately embraced it. Because I feel like comedy is always cynical, inherently, because it's contrarian.

Ultimately, jokes are this really special thing that we can all share. It's exciting to have basically a thousand people in a room together that can laugh at the same time, but I think of it almost as, like, a religious experience.

My dad goes through war novels like I go through boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

I love pizza. I want to marry it, but it would just be to eat her family at the wedding.

I feel that marriage can lead to the ultimate rejection and failure and divorce and things we all fear.

Once you know how to make a movie, you can't not make a movie.

If you're asked something on a movie set and you say 'I don't know,' you lose confidence in every department. What you need to say is 'I'll have that for you in five minutes.'

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.

Backup dancers are completely respectable. They're the studio musicians of dance.

I'm unable to do the thing that Broadway actors do in plays, sometimes for years. The same exact blocking, the same exact lines. I'm a little bit uncomfortable with that. Every night I'm looking for ways to try something else.

I think the thing I had to be careful about while writing a book was not to say anything that was revealing about other people that they would be uncomfortable with. I didn't want to make people angry - that's a real risk.

I have a following, but it's small. I have this level of fame where people spot me in the airport, consistently, but they always think they're the only one who ever has. People will think they win a prize when they recognize me.

I read recently that women still make 30% less than men in the workplace. Which I think is fine, cause if we didn't make 30% more, you guys would marry each other.

When I was in college, I wanted to write for 'Late Night With Conan O'Brien,' and I was an intern there.

Comedy unites, it doesn't divide!

Starbucks is the last public space with chairs. It's a shower for homeless people. And it's a place you can write all day. The baristas don't glare at you. They don't even look at you.

Everything about starting out in comedy is pride-swallowing, from handing out fliers to bombing in front of audiences.

When I was starting out, I thought I would go into comedy and there would be a mentor, like the Philip Seymour Hoffman character in 'Almost Famous,' in my life, and there just wasn't. It was really frustrating for me because I desired that so much.

Someone gave me a piece of advice once, my first manager Lucien Hold. He said, 'If you do stand-up about your own life, no one can steal it.' I always thought that was the best piece of advice.