305 Quotes by 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.

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.

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.

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'm a whitebread cracker. That's my favorite white person slur: "whitebread". The other day, someone came up to me and said, "What's up, whitebread?" And I was like, "That's not even an insult. That's just my race plus a food. I can do that, too, black bean soup! Stay out of this, Asian chicken platter!"

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.

Elia Kazan. He wrote my favorite book about filmmaking, 'Elia Kazan: On Directing.' There is a thing in the book that I do every time, it's part of my production structure. He said when you're hiring an actor, ask them what draws them to the project, and don't lead them to the answer.

Jokes are so personal, and they bring us together in so many ways.

I was an altar boy as a kid. And the answer is no.