Panning Gold Quotes & Sayings

Everyone tells you to write what you know. It's the tried-and-true advice every writer hears at some point in her career. But to take my writing to a deeper level, I've found that a better practice is to simply write what frightens you, haunts you, even. I now keep a sign on the bulletin board in my office that reads: 'Write What Scares You.' I've learned that tapping into the hard stuff - whether it's the fear of loss or a boogeyman lurking in childhood memories - is what ultimately gives a story the power to leap off the page and grab you by the collar. — Sarah Jio

I can't tell you how to live your life," Samuel said, "although I do be telling you how to live it. I know that it might be better for you to come out from under your might-have-beens, into the winds of the world. And while I tell you, I am myself sifting my memories, the way men pan the dirt under a barroom floor for the bits of gold dust that fall between the cracks. It's small mining
small mining. You're too young a man to be panning memories, Adam. You should be getting yourself some new ones, so that the mining will be richer when you come of age. — John Steinbeck

Once you put bacon in a salad, it's no longer a salad. It just becomes a game of 'find the bacon in the lettuce'. It's like you're panning for gold. Eureka! — Jim Gaffigan

Taking pictures is like panning for gold. You do it again and again, and sometimes you find a nugget. — Raghubir Singh

If lyrics make people do things, how come we don't love each other? — Frank Zappa

The Utopians call those nations that come and ask magistrates from them Neighbours; but those to whom they have been of more particular service, Friends; and as all other nations are perpetually either making leagues or breaking them, they never enter into an alliance with any state. They think leagues are useless things, and believe that if the common ties of humanity do not knit men together, the faith of promises will have no great effect; and they are the more confirmed in this by what they see among the nations round about them, who are no strict observers of leagues and treaties. — Thomas More

You have a heart of gold and I am kneeling in your bloodstream panning for the only thing that has ever felt like home. — Andrea Gibson

In years since he has rarely gone back to those old memories. As he does now, in the tavern near Harvard College, he's startled to find that the muddy whirl has been swept away. The mental pan has been churning for fifty years, sorting the dirt and sand to the periphery and throwing it off. Most of the memories are simply gone. All that remain are a few wee nuggets. It's not plain to Daniel why these impressions have stayed, while others, which seemed as or more important to him at the time they happened, have gone away. But if the gold-panning similitude is faithful, it means that these memories matter more than the ones that have flown. For gold stays in the pan's center because of its density; it has more matter (whatever that means) in a given extent than anything else. — Neal Stephenson

Like an old gold-panning prospector, you must resign yourself to digging up a lot of sand from which you will later patiently wash out a few minute particles of gold ore. — Dorothy Bryant

As long as a population can be induced to believe in a supernatural hereafter, it can be oppressed and controlled. People will put up with all sorts of tyranny, poverty, and painful treatment if they're convinced that they'll eventually escape to some resort in the sky where lifeguards are superfluous and the pool never closes. Moreover, the faithful are usually willing to risk their skins in whatever military adventure their government may currently be promoting. — Tom Robbins

His speech is low and rapid, his manner assured; he is at home in courtroom or waterfront, bishop's palace or inn yard. He can draft a contract, train a falcon, draw a map, stop a street fight, furnish a house and fix a jury. He will quote you a nice point in the old authors, from Plato to Plautus and back again. He knows new poetry, and can say it in Italian. He works all hours, first up and last to bed. He makes money and he spends it. He will take a bet on anything. — Hilary Mantel

I am sifting my memories, the way men pan the dirt under a barroom floor for the bits of gold dust that fall between the cracks. It's small mining
small mining. You're too young a man to be panning memories, Adam. You should be getting yourself some new ones, so that the mining will be richer when you come to age. — John Steinbeck

Both heaven and hell are within us. — Mahatma Gandhi

I can't make any promises ... I became a scientist because ... it's ike panning for gold in a muddy torrent. Truth is the gold. I- I don't know what I want to do ... '
'Journalists work in torrents just as muddy.'
The moon is over the water.
'Do ... whatever you can't not do. — David Mitchell

I dressed like Leslie Caron as a teenager: soft school pleats, Peter Pan collars. — Mary Quant

Burgeoning technologies require outlaw zones, that Night City wasn't there for its inhabitants, but as a deliberately unsupervised playground for technology itself. — William Gibson

For most digital-age writers, writing is rewriting. We grope, cut, block, paste, and twitch, panning for gold onscreen by deleting bucketloads of crap. Our analog ancestors had to polish every line mentally before hammering it out mechanically. Rewrites cost them months, meters of ink ribbon, and pints of Tippex. Poor sods. — David Mitchell

Oh yeah - you have to write every day. Or every weekday. Because writing is a job. It's not eureka moments over and over. It's grueling work, panning for gold. You just keep at it and eventually you get a few grains. Or flakes. Or whatever gold looks like in rivers. Or maybe it's like fishing. Who cares? You just have to do it every day because you never know which day is going to be your productive day. — Tim Schafer

I had to work out where I was going, what type of films I wanted to make. For that reason, I decided to choose independent productions, less important roles, and I tried theater, too. — Elizabeth Berkley

Hey boys, come up here!" Lee's excited shout bounced from rock to rock down the gulch. "I've got all of California right here in this pan! — Phyllis Flanders Dorset

One thing that's unique to 'Uncharted' is something called 'chasing picture,' where Naughty Dog run a section of gameplay and I'm allowed to ad-lib over it. We call it 'panning for gold.' — Nolan North