Mike Birbiglia

After I perform 'My Girlfriend's Boyfriend,' it takes a lot out of me emotionally; and, at the end of it, I feel like I know the audience and the audience knows me. It's this weird unspoken bond that we'll kind of always have with each other.

Backup dancers are completely respectable. They're the studio musicians of dance.

I was raised Catholic, and then I kind of wandered away somewhere in high-school. I never got confirmed, which is a big deal.

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.'

I am intimidating no one in America. No one feels like they are below me in any way. They feel like they are absolutely either at or above my level and 100-percent comfortable talking to me.

I'm unable to do the thing that Broadway actors do in plays, sometimes for years. The same exact blocking, the same exact lines. I'm a little bit uncomfortable with that. Every night I'm looking for ways to try something else.

Once you start writing something obsessively, it's almost like someone has to rip it from your hands in order for you to put it down.

Sometimes you'll have a heckler who's actually attempting to be supportive, but you don't realize it. Their way of expressing it is kind of confusing.

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

You have to be delusional to be a comedian.

When I moved to New York, I was wide-eyed. I was nice to everyone, which comedians hate.

I'm a comedian, and the other comedians are played by comedians, the same way that in 'Once' there are the musicians that hang out together.