Sam Shepard

"When you hit a wall - of your own imagined limitations - just kick it in."

A late night in the early 1990s, I cannot sleep and move into the sitting room, switch on the tv and find myself in the first act of True West, John Malkovich's whiny voice while he picks his nose. I sit mesmerised through the kicking and fighting until the kitchen has been destroyed and the typewriter flung across the stage.

Before that, I had fallen in love with the actor playing Chuck Yeager, possibly because of the way he wore that leather jacket and his laugh. Then there he was Walter Faber and so much more than the man I had imagined when we read the novel in school. And obviously, he wrote this monologue. I don't remember how often I watched Paris, Texas because he wrote it but I am glad I did.

And now he is dead and how can that be. Playwright, actor, musician, magician, eternal cowboy.

"I hate endings. Just detest them. Beginnings are definitely the most exciting, middles are perplexing and endings are a disaster."