Comedian

I end up talking about really mundane things with my fans, and then they're kind of like, 'This is boring. I want to go talk to somebody else.' I think I bore my fans to death by over-talking to them.

I sometimes think of not doing Twitter or Facebook anymore, but that's how people find their favorite bands and comedians.

I always have the best story at the party. Anyone telling a story at a party is like, 'No, no, you've got to listen to my story!' I'm like, 'Step aside, everybody. I'm going to blow the doors off this place.'

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

I've become good friends with Lena Dunham, and the thing I had in common with Lena when I was 24 is I was as ambitious as she was. What we don't have in common is that I was not as talented. My voice was not as clearly defined.

I feel like people have more in common than the news reports. People getting along doesn't sell very well in the news. I find that to be deeply depressing.

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.

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.

If you tried to sell Mike Birbiglia as a concept, no one would buy it.

I've found, being in Los Angeles, it's like living in a live-action Planet Hollywood.

Film is so immersive.

'Terminator 2' is so good. I love it.

You don't really see sleepwalking in films that often. It's weird; I feel like in popular culture we have the perception of sitcom, arms-in-front-of-your-body sleepwalking, and then maybe Olive Oil and Popeye when she sleepwalks through the construction site. But it's all very cartoonish, in some cases literally.

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.

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.

It's a difficult line to tread, where sometimes you go to the movies or you watch someone do publicity for movies or TV shows, and they do all the jokes that are good in the promotion of it, and you see the movie, and you're like, 'I kind of get it already. I'm not that psyched about it.'

I got out of school in 2000, and I always wanted to be on 'This American Life,' since I first started telling stories. And that, I mean, that show is a little bit of a fortress. It's really hard to get stuff on that show.

Essentially, retweets are like laughs.

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.

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.