Charles Martin Smith Quotes

What’s wonderful is to read the different translations – some done in 1600 and some in 1900 – of the same passage. It’s fascinating to watch the same tale repeated in such a different way by two different centuries.

There is a huge antipathy in England between the north and the south, the working class and the owning class.

Then years back, when I moved to California, I happened to see a book about fashions of 19th-century Victorian England, only four pages of which was devoted to the dress of the working class.

Then there was the whole concept of coal mining, which is a culture unto itself, the most dangerous occupation in the world, and which draws and develops a certain kind of man.

The great thing about being a writer is that you are always recreating yourself.

The government is shutting down the coal industry, they say it’s cheaper to draw nuclear power off the French grid and cheaper to buy coal from Colombia.