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If you want improvements in coal, you've got to keep people in the business.

You have to recognize what the markets are doing, what the rules and regulations are doing, and all the more reasons that we've got to find some more solutions in particular with coal.

Here in Indiana and in many states throughout the union, we rely on coal to power our homes and provide good-paying middle class jobs - like the one my family relied on when I was a kid. The coal mine helped put food on our table and helped me pursue an education and realize the American Dream.

To shut off coal, or to say you can't have further coal development, I think is the wrong way to go.

Coal mining is an industry rife with mismanagement, corruption, greed and an almost blatant disregard for the safety, health and quality of life of its work force. Everyone knows this. Everyone has always known it.

Coal mining is tough. Acting is just tedious.

I'm lucky to have a job doing something I really love to do, and I'm happy to accept the pressures of relentless deadlines or reader expectations as necessary evils. It's probably not as stressful as mining coal or leading men into battle.

An unskilled middle-aged man can work in the mines, and it pays well.

I'll be the first one to tell you I burn coal... That fossil generation and the nuclear generation, frankly, is necessary in order for me to provide power.

I'm a novelist - not an expert on coal mining. I'm not a politician with an agenda to push. I'm not a reporter presenting facts, and I'm not a sociologist documenting the last struggling remnants of blue-collar America. I'm simply an author who sets her books in coal country because it's where I come from, and it's what I know.