Nell Zink

My whole life, I wanted to write. What validates you as a writer is the adulation of fans... and I've got that... 'Animal Review' is pretty well-known.

When people recommend to me a book for personal reasons, that's what makes it fun to read. It's like when people would make mixtapes and say, 'Here are the songs I think you should know.'

If you're going to clutter up the world with more novels, you should do a little more than entertain people.

Recently, I was in Bernalda, my dad's ancestral home town in Italy. He has just refurbished a palazzo and turned it into a hotel, so we had my sister's wedding there. It was beautiful.

I'm a working stiff, baby, just like everybody else.

Another thing that freaks me out is time. Time is like a book. You have a beginning, a middle and an end. It's just a cycle.