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At times you feel like you're the only voice speaking out to improve the working conditions of people, whether it's to be able to collectively bargain, to get adequate pay, to know that you can come home safe out of a coal mine.

For the longest time I was afraid I'd have to keep on working at the factories. There was a steel mill and a pottery; if you didn't go to college, you went to work in those places.

I come from a coal-mining, working-class background. My father was a coal miner.

I was a manual labourer. I figured out really early on that the value of my life could be determined by my hourly rate as a manual labourer digging holes.

He that is proud of riches is a fool. For if he is exalted above his neighbors because he has more gold, how much inferior is he to a gold mine.

Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.

For better or worse, the bulk of coal industry jobs are in Appalachia - and when that coal is gone, so are the jobs.

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.