Mike Birbiglia Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“How many people do you know who have thrown up on the Scrambler or a carnival ride? A lot of people, is the answer.”

“Directing your first film is like showing up to the field trip in seventh grade, getting on the bus, and making an announcement, 'So today I'm driving the bus.' And everybody's like, 'What?' And you're like, 'I'm gonna drive the bus.' And they're like, 'But you don't know how to drive the bus.'”

“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.'”

“What I always studied in screenwriting from my mentor John Glavin was that the most interesting characters are characters with shades of gray.”

“You can't go to medical school and come out and be like, 'I'm going to be a dog catcher.' That would be so pointless.”

“As a comedian, you want people to like you. That's part of why you're there in the first place: You have this unquenchable need to be liked, and then when you divert from that and take a chance at doing something that has moments of fierce unlikeability, you can hit some real low points.”

“Every comedian comes to a fork in the road where they have to decide if they're going to make jokes about other people or make jokes about themselves. I chose myself.”

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

“When you're in high school, you can't even imagine the concept of what the rest of your life even means.”

“With a monologue, you can be unendingly elliptical.”