Walt Whitman on the Endless Journey of Self

And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.

We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and—in spite of True Romance magazines—we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way.

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

A mysterious trunk discovered in a Buenos Aires estate contains what appears to be a complete, unpublished novel by Jorge Luis Borges, written entirely backward in mirror script. Scholars believe the 400-page manuscript may represent Borges' most ambitious literary experiment.

Master the art of meaningful omission. When characters deliberately avoid mentioning something obvious, that silence creates more tension than any spoken word. Have them talk around the issue while readers feel pressure building. When two estranged brothers meet after their father's funeral, don't have them argue about inheritance. Have them discuss weather, catering quality, parking spaces—anything except what matters. Each mundane exchange becomes charged with unspoken grief. Plant 'pressure leaks'—moments where the suppressed topic almost surfaces. A pause too long, a sentence trailing off, a sudden subject change. These micro-fractures signal something important beneath the surface.