I think that writers often try too hard in the name of expression, when often it's just a matter of reframing what's around you or republishing a preexisting text into a new environment that makes for a successful work.

And I think this is the real epiphany: the ways in which culture is distributed become profoundly more intriguing as a cultural artifact itself. What we've experienced is an inversion of consumption, one in which we've come to prefer the acts of acquisition over that which we are acquiring, the bottles over the wine.

An updated notion of genius would have to center around one's mastery of information and its dissemination.

I think it's time to admit that our writing is guided by the technology we use as much as it is by our own subjectivity.

The moment we shake our addiction to narrative and give up our strong-headed intent that language must say something "meaningful," we open ourselves up to different types of linguistic experience, which could include sorting and structuring words in unconventional ways: by constraint, by sound, by the way words look, and so forth, rather than always feeling the need to coerce them toward meaning.

I never wanted my books to be mistaken for poetry or fiction books; I wanted to write reference books. But instead of referring to something, they refer to nothing.

For me, Twitter is a public persona. It's UbuWeb or Kenneth Goldsmith (as opposed to Kenny Goldsmith). I don't interact. It's a lousy form for conversation and opinion (what can you really say in 140 characters?), but a wonderful propaganda and sloganeering tool. I use it as a one-way street.