All That Is Unwritten

As I read the next-to-last chapter of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, a thought occurred to me:

Tell them nothing and they will know everything.

The beauty of writing lies equally in what isn't written at all. The reader is given the unspoken responsibility of taking what is given and imagining the rest. In the chapter I read last night, three characters are walking to battle, and several unrelated paragraphs later, they are bleeding and worn and tired, and the battle is over.

In the hands of a brilliant reader, the best part of a story was never even in the book.