Mike Birbiglia Quotes

Comedy is tragedy - plus time.

Humor is tragedy plus time.

Tragedy plus time equals humor.

The energy in a comedy is very serious. Somebody said comedy is a tragedy plus time. When you have a tragedy, for example, like this, like, 'We're going to die,' and you have time, like, five hours to die, it becomes a comedy.

The difference between tragedy and comedy: Tragedy is something awful happening to somebody else, while comedy is something awful happening to somebody else.

The things we laugh at are awful while they are going on, but get funny when we look back. And other people laugh because they've been through it too. The closest thing to humor is tragedy.

I naturally think in terms of comedy whenever I see anything because tragedy is so close to comedy, so I like to add the tragedy to the comedy or a little bit of comedy to the tragedy in order to make them both feel more real to me.

I think you can tell the human condition better through comedy.

I think that sometimes only comedians can reach the peaks of tragedy.

I don't really find things funny unless they're deeply tragic at the same time. I think if you're funny just for the sake of being funny, it's just frivolous nonsense. To me, all the best comic plays have been written about really serious and rather bleak things.

Misery is the stuff of comedy, if one can just live long enough to get over it.

I don't think that there's necessarily a side to drama that has to be completely bleak. You have to have a flicker of humor 'cause everyone has a flicker of humor, something they find funny in life.

Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people.

I think of everything as comedy, but I don't think of it in terms of sitcom comedy, I think of it in terms of Chekhov comedy. Chekhov called his plays comedies. There's always a mixture of a laugh with sadness. So the plie to the laugh is sadness.

People find the humor in life all the time. And you have to in order to make it through real life. Like, some things are tragic, but you have to laugh.

Comedy is only funny when there's real pain.

There is nothing that is so serious that you can't also see its comic side. Comedy is a way of talking about the most serious things.

I think a joke is a form of truth-telling. A good joke that's absurd contains elements of our daily darkness and also a possibility to escape that darkness. So, for me, humor is an attempt to capture everyday tragedy and everyday hopeful moments that we experience all of the time.

As with anything that involves emotional pain, comedy isn't too far behind. There's that element of no matter how painful something is - as long as it is not you that is going through it - it can be funny.

Comedy provides an escape from the horrors of real life.

You can find humor in most things, and even terrible things.

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

I'm inspired by making people laugh at subjects that should make them cry.

Satire is tragedy plus time.

Comedy is tragedy revisited.