With this 'social media,' instead of letters you get emails. They're all written in a hurry, with no punctuation, no paragraphs - it's one continual stream, with spelling mistakes. Quite frankly I think it's a world I don't need. But I have to read them all because people say, 'Did you get my letter?' And it's not even a letter!
When I swapped studying for a wage and a proper job, Mam and Dad were devastated. I was rejecting an opportunity they never had. But their eldest son, at 16, wanted only to follow his father down the pit. It was to be the biggest education of my life.
We dragged the National Health Service from the depths of degradation. I've got a United Nations heart bypass to prove it and it was done by a Syrian cardiologist, a Malaysian surgeon, a Dutch doctor and a Nigerian registrar.
When posh boys are in trouble they sack their servants.
My life hasn't been all about politics.
Well, I don't believe in patronage.
I've never made a perfect speech or a perfect anything. I always think after, I should have done it that way or this way.
I think if I hadn't been born in a pit village I'd have been part of a dramatic society.
If I am doing a speech at a Labour party meeting - I think I have done every constituency - I'll look for a happy face, and talk to that face. In the Commons, with all the anger, I'll fix on a blank panel above their heads.
I've never done any cross-party stuff. I've no interest in sitting down discussing pensions or whatever with Tories.
I'm not gregarious. I spend a lot of time in the parks when it is fine. I do know almost every blade of grass.
If I'd not been a coal miner in the past, getting up very early, I wouldn't have been able to have done what I've been doing.
I'm up at the crack of dawn.
I am naturally disciplined. It started early; you can't be all free and easy in a family of 10.
There are only so many things you can do in life, and if you think I'm going to spend my waking hours thinking about some decency in some Tory or other, forget it.
I have bought my flat myself and never charged a penny of it to the taxpayers.
We have all lost before and we will win again.
I used to be very athletic when I was a young man.
I wouldn't take Father of the House even if I was offered it.
I've never bothered about what people say about me.
