Quotes from Dennis Skinner

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'm not gregarious. I spend a lot of time in the parks when it is fine. I do know almost every blade of grass.

When Cameron said to me 'you're a dinosaur,' several people in Parliament said to me 'you're trendin', Dennis, you're trendin' - and I didn't know what it meant. I know now what it is.

Parties are organised happiness but happiness is accidental. You can't legislate for it.

I hate to say it because I voted against everything Thatcher did, but she had principles she believed in.

Well, I don't believe in patronage.

I've never bothered about what people say about me.

I was elected by people voting Labour! The idea that you come to Parliament and the first thing you do is that you're hand in hand with Tories and Liberals - I can't understand it! I came here and I made my mind up that I wasn't going to collaborate with the people I'd fought against in the election. It wasn't a difficult thing.

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.

I didn't know when Parliament started to pay my wages.

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 was cycling until I was 68. I used to play football, cricket, tennis, table tennis. I was into road walking - heel and toe.

The personality cult of the ego does not work down a coal mine and it does not work in the Labour party.

I worked in the pit for more than 20 years and never had a serious injury.

Isn't it essential in any prelude to a war to be sure of your allies and be sure of your objectives?

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.

I don't think you should celebrate age.

I've never been to a dinner that's laid on anywhere. I don't want to waste what few hours I've got.

I've never sent an email to anybody. I believe in keeping the postman in work.

I have bought my flat myself and never charged a penny of it to the taxpayers.

You don't enter politics when you come to parliament. I was getting politics for breakfast, dinner and tea when I was a little kid.

I refused to pair with a Tory MP, I refused all foreign junkets and I've never had a drink in a Westminster bar.

I always work on the principle that if my heart and my head are together on an issue, write it, say it.

I am naturally disciplined. It started early; you can't be all free and easy in a family of 10.