The role of the professor now is part party host, part traffic cop, full-time enabler. - Kenneth Goldsmith

W: You sound like that man on the Times who considers my paintings to be sociological commentary. I just happen to like ordinary things. When I paint them, I don’t try to make them extraordinary. I just try to paint them ordinary-ordinary. Sociological critics are waste makers.

Your photo of the Eiffel Tower on Flickr is identically redundant to the millions already stored on Flickr, yet you keep on snapping them (just as I keep downloading MP3s).

The best thing about conceptual poetry is that it doesn’t need to be read. You don’t have to read it. As a matter of fact, you can write books, and you don’t even have to read them. My books, for example, are unreadable. All you need to know is the concept behind them. Here’s every word I spoke for a week. Here’s a year’s worth of weather reports... and without ever having to read these things, you understand them.