Sam Shepard died today at 73.

He was more of a playwright than anything to me, and I’m not a theater guy that much.

THAT said, he was great in the Grisham movie The Pelican Brief and other acting roles. He was extremely versatile, to say the least. Playwright, director, actor.

But I loved his writing. This is from “True West” – so well written:

So they take off after each other straight into an endless black prairie. The sun is just comin’ down and they can feel the night on their backs. What they don’t know is that each one of ’em is afraid, see. And then keep ridin’ like that straight into the night. Not knowing. And the one who’s chasin’ doesn’t know where the other one is taking him. And the one who’s being chased doesn’t know where he’s going.

Update 8/6/2017: My Buddy. A remembrance of Shepard by Patti Smith published in The New Yorker. Reminiscent of the prologue to Smith’s Just Friends, her memoir about Smith’s long-time relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.