How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).
Quote #1
RIGGAN: I have a lot riding on this f***ing play.
MIKE: Oh, is that right?
RIGGAN: Yeah, people know who I am, and—
MIKE: F***ing bulls***.
RIGGAN: Mike—
MIKE: Bulls***. They—they don't know you, your work, man. They know the guy in the bird suit who goes and tells coy, slightly vomitous stories on Letterman.
Riggan keeps insisting he doesn't exist, and in some ways he's right. When people think Riggan Thomson they don't think about him as an individual, they think about the guy who sits behind the bird mask in the movies. This play is Riggan's attempt to create an identity for himself apart from his superhero alterego.
Quote #2
MIKE: "A man becomes a critic when he cannot be a [sic] artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier." Flaubert, right?
TABITHA: He's a Hollywood clown in a Lycra bird suit.
MIKE: Yes, he is. But tomorrow night, at eight o'clock, he's going out on that stage and risking everything.
There's a lot of labeling going on here, as Riggan will later point out. Tabitha calls him a "Hollywood clown" in an ad hominem insult that comes from her disdain of mainstream cinema, but her critique is lacking substance. She hasn't even seen the play. As for Mike's Flaubert quote, we see him taking a similar shot at Tabitha, telling her she's a has-been or a never-was. But his insult is also without substance, he's just using someone else's words.
Quote #3
SAM: […] let's face it dad, you are not doing this for the sake of art, you are doing this because you want to feel relevant again. Well, guess what, there is an entire world out there where people fight to be relevant every single day, and you act like it doesn't exist. Things are happening in a place that you ignore, a place that, by the way, has already forgotten about you. I mean, who the f*** are you?! You hate bloggers, you mock Twitter, you don't even have a Facebook page. You're the one who doesn't exist. You're doing this because you're scared to death, like the rest of us, that you don't matter and, you know what, you're right. You don't. It's not important. You're not important, okay. You're not important. Get used to it.
What does it mean to exist? Both Sam and Riggan define existence based on the knowledge of other people. If people don't know you, you're nobody. Most people aren't this passionate about social media, but Sam has a point. These days, if you don't have some kind of online presence, in a way your existence is diminished; you exist less than other people who have a virtual identity.