If you tried to sell Mike Birbiglia as a concept, no one would buy it.
First time films are hard. Even with some of the greatest directors, you look back at their first film, and you are just going, 'That movie is kind of bad.'
I feel like everyone wants to make a movie that they feel passionate about watching.
Louis C.K. directs his show, which is very much like a series of short films.
I consider Lena Dunham a comedian.
I feel that marriage can lead to the ultimate rejection and failure and divorce and things we all fear.
I think your tendency when you play yourself is to accentuate something about you that you think is the funny thing about you.
I almost can't even put to words how happy I am that I got married.
There's nothing funny the first time about telling a story about getting beat up and it makes you leave high school.
I think because I've been working in front of audiences for so many years, I'm able to take in the input, good or bad, and just say, 'This is the part I agree with that you're saying, and these are the parts I don't agree with.'
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.
Nobody knows the life of the working comic.
When I met my wife, I was a working comic, so the first week we went out, she saw me perform, and it was very clear what I do.
As artists, we'd all love to not be commercial - to not sell out to the full extent that we are able. But you do what you have to do to pay New York rent and continue to do what you feel strongly about.
I was raised Catholic, and then I kind of wandered away somewhere in high-school. I never got confirmed, which is a big deal.
When I was growing up, I didn't know who Jewish people were, what it was to be Jewish.
One of my favorite comedies of all time is 'Terms of Endearment;' that's my pace.
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.
I'm incapable of feeling any joy.
I like 'Donnie Darko;' it's a cool take on dreams and sleep.
