Mike Birbiglia Comedy Quotations

I drank the Kool-Aid of being a network star. Once it didn't happen, I realized it wasn't the best version of my comedy.

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

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

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.

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.

I feel like being a door person was like college in a sense. I could watch comedy on a professional level seven nights a week without paying, and they would pay me a nominal amount of money to be there.

I thought if I could do stand-up comedy well enough, I could parlay it back into films - like Charlie Chaplin and Woody Allen did. They merged principles of comedy and drama together, and that's what my first film really was, a stab at that kind of comedy.

I was a screenwriting major in college, and really wanted to do that after I graduated, but there are no job listings for that, as we all know. I had many classmates that made it in the business, but stand-up comedy was my way in, and my first film 'Sleepwalk with Me' was based on those autobiographical experiences.

Awkwardness and feeling alienated are always going to be a part of comedy.

I feel like we can prove in real time the old trope that comedy is tragedy plus time.

Comedy unites, it doesn't divide!

All techniques of comedy are valid and interesting to me.

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

Sometimes when I do a joke and it doesn't get a lot of laughs, it kind of feels like I'm doing jazz. That's kinda cool because jazz is cool, but sometimes jazz sucks ... Maybe I'm the Kenny G of comedy.