How to parse a string completely into a list

[john . ford]

I want to take a long alpha-numeric string with \n and white-space and
place ALL elements of the string (even individual parts of a long
white-space) into separate list elements. The most common way I've
seen this performed is with the split() function, however I don't
believe that it has the power to do what I am looking for.
Any suggestions?
thanks
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