I wrote my undergraduate honors thesis on the plays of Sam Shepard. I took my first-ever date (hi, Maria) to see Shepard in The Right Stuff.

He’s dressed in country clothes – a checked shirt and a nondescript jacket – and, unlike most writers, he has an outdoors complexion; a lived-in face. But what’s most noticeable is his sense of humour. It’s a lovely, gentle thing; he pokes fun at me, at himself; and when I listen back to the tape, I realise something more shocking still: he doesn’t just laugh, and on occasion guffaw, he actually giggles. Sam Shepard is a giggler.

[…]

He writes on a manual typewriter, and refuses to so much as look at the internet. “I have a cellphone but I have no Google, I have no gaggle.”

Really? But everything you’ve ever wondered, ever, is out there, I say.

“No, no, no! The things that I wonder about most are not on the internet, I promise you that.” —The Observer.