Underground Work Quotes

Mining created Chile. The story of men who go down into the mountain and chip away at minerals in the darkness and then suffer an accident that leaves them at the mercy of that darkness is part of the DNA of Chile, an integral part of the country's history.

My great-grandfather was a coal miner, who worked in Pennsylvania mines when carts were pulled by mules and mines were lit by candles. Mining was very dangerous work then.

To be honest, it was slavery. Nobody should have any romantic ideas about working underground. It's very, very dangerous. You always knew you were living in danger. You were on your hands and knees half the day.

My father and brothers were coal miners.

I have found, for example, that if I have to write upon sum rather difficult topic, the best plan is to think about it with very great intensity-the greatest intensity of which I am capable-for a few hours or days, and at the end of that time give orders, so to speak (to my subconscious mind) that the work is to proceed underground. After some months I return consciously to the topic and find that the work has been done.

My father was a miner and he worked down a mine.

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 never, ever romanticise life in the pit. It was a hard, dirty, noisy, tiring, dangerous job in a confined space, a very dark world with no toilets or running water to drink or wash with.

And during my college, at the end of the junior year I worked in a mine.

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.

Wherever is love and loyalty, great purposes and lofty souls, even though in a hovel or a mine, there is fairyland.

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.

And there's one thing about this underground work, we shan't get any rain.

I have a sequence to my creative life. In spring and fall, I am above ground and commit to community. In the summer, I'm outside. It is a time for family. And in the winter, I am underground. Home. This is when I do my work as a writer - in hibernation. I write with the bears.

A coal mine greets you with only one sentiment, then hammers it: 'This is not a place for people. This is not a place for people. This is not a place for people'.

If anyone wants a hole in the ground, nuclear explosives can make big holes

The collier women of this village—poor over-toiled creatures who carried up all the coal from underground on their backs by a long turnpike stair inserted in one of the shafts—continued to bear more of the marks of serfdom still about them …