The way I view comedy clubs is, people are drinking, they're ordering food, they're out for the night, and there's also a person onstage talking. And with the theater, they came to the theater, and they're waiting to hear what you say. So you'd better have something to say.

Mike Birbiglia

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

Mike Birbiglia

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.

Mike Birbiglia

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

Mike Birbiglia

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.

Mike Birbiglia

The ability to workshop in stand-up comedy is incomparable to any art form, in my opinion.

Mike Birbiglia

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.

Mike Birbiglia

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

Mike Birbiglia

When I was growing up, I didn't know who Jewish people were, what it was to be Jewish.

Mike Birbiglia

The way I view comedy clubs is, people are drinking, they're ordering food, they're out for the night, and there's also a person onstage talking. And with the theater, they came to the theater, and they're waiting to hear what you say. So you'd better have something to say.

Mike Birbiglia

The thing with film is that it's so wide-reaching compared to comedy. When I release my comedy special, half a million people will see it. If I release a movie, five to ten million people will see it.

Mike Birbiglia

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.

Mike Birbiglia

I love Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel.

Mike Birbiglia

I never looked at my parents' marriage or really anyone who had been married more than 30 years and thought, 'I gotta get me some of that!'

Mike Birbiglia

I've yet to write a stand-up show that isn't autobiographical.

Mike Birbiglia

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.

Mike Birbiglia

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

Mike Birbiglia

The one thing you're most reluctant to tell. That's where the comedy is.

Mike Birbiglia

My wife and I always comment that our lives are relatively mundane. She's a writer as well, I'm a writer, we spend most of our time writing, and kind of going to yoga in Brooklyn.

Mike Birbiglia

I'm going to end up making twenty films if people let me.

Mike Birbiglia

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.

Mike Birbiglia