Joseph Wambaugh Quotes

I'm sure I took some licks at the system, and at trials and lawyers in general. I've seen enough of them for so many years both as a cop and a defendant in defamation cases.

Probably 95 percent of the things that are written never get on the screen.

The O.J. Simpson case, they had no understanding of that DNA evidence, and didn't want to.

No one I know of has ever had this experience-where you had to sit and wait and wait for a DNA test to come back just so you can write the last page of the book.

It's corruption never been systemic, because a fish rots from the head

The Onion Field, that one got pretty close to me because I was a cop when it happened. I saw some of the indifference that my police department showed to the surviving officer.

The Onion Field made a real writer. And then I knew it was over, I couldn't be a cop anymore.

I enjoy doing the research of nonfiction; that gives me some pleasure, being a detective again.

The serial arsonist is the most difficult to apprehend because the evidence is burned up.

Today, lawyers are attacking more; they're attacking everything. A good example is the O.J. Simpson case.

When I wrote The Onion Field, I realized that my first two novels were just practice.

If you take 67 brush fires times 10 years, that's almost 700 right there. Those brush fires are incredibly dangerous, all those homes going down proved that.

I enjoy adapting my own work, or anybody's work. I like to adapt books.

Every time I write a nonfiction book I get sued.

When I interview people accused of capital offenses, I never even ask if they did it. I would consider that unprofessional.

Jury selection is strictly an emotional process. They're looking for people they can manipulate. Both sides are.

Civil servants take forever to do anything.

The time has come for professional jurors.

I hadn't done anything in six years; I was just vegetating.

I was never a wet-eyed, passionate writer; I was always a policeman.

What is it about the component of fire? People have written about it. People have wondered about it.

I certainly believe it's over for the jury system, but we won't admit it for a while.

Perhaps it had nothing to do with sin and everything to do with sociopathy, that most incurable of human disorders because all so afflicted consider themselves blessed rather than cursed.

I write a thousand words a day. Nothing will stop me, I mean nothing, until the book is finished. I'm disciplined in spite of myself.