Miner's Life Quotes

We were all miners in our family. My father was a miner. My mother is a miner. These are miner's hands, but we were all artists, I suppose, really. But I was the first one who had the urge to express myself on paper rather than at the coalface.

I come from the coal fields.

My dad was a miner at South Kirkby colliery. He went on strike but he didn't go to the picket line, he just put his feet up and got in my mum's way.

The problem of working in a mine, you are inside the belly of the monster, and it controls you. The air you breathe, the stones that fall on your head, we had to be on guard.

I heard more of the stories from my mother and my granny and my aunts that would describe what they had known that he didn't often talk about. I remember seeing [grandfather] as a child. He was working in a mine that was fairly close to their home there in Betsy Lane, Ky., and it was so close in proximity that he wouldn't clean up or shower there. He would just drive back home. And I remember one time seeing him come in and it was like seeing an alien person show up because he was still covered in coal dust and soot, and it had a profound impact on me.

When I was born, my father was a copper miner in Butte, Montana. It was a hard-core, blue-collar situation.

My grandfather, who brought me up, was a coal miner. I visited the mines with him. I remember it vividly. It was horrible. I'm glad I didn't go into the family business.

I never went into the mine. But I saw my father and other men coming out, day after day, their faces and bodies covered in soot. It looked very hard and dangerous.