Denis Smelchakov

“To anyone who took the trouble to look, I was plainly visible, but when people are expecting to see nothing, that is usually what they see.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“And every day I open a volume or two, read a few lines or pages, allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head. Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so. For it must be very lonely being dead.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“Every so often I take out a volume and read a page or two. After all, reading is looking after in a manner of speaking. Though they're not old enough to be valuable for their age alone, nor important enough to be sought after by collectors, my charges are dear to me, even if, as often as not, they are as dull on the inside as on the outside. No matter how banal the contents, there is always something that touches me. For someone now dead once thought these words significant enough to write them down.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“For it must be very lonely being dead.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale