Every time I write a nonfiction book I get sued.

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.

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

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

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

To live, pray. To learn, read. To love, give. To listen, pay attention. But to be wise, apply all that you have acquired

I didn't know the full dimensions of forever, but I knew it was longer than waiting for Christmas to come.

To me, not every black filmmaker who is making black films is trying to make black cinema.

We all played bad before we played good.

The sensuality of desperate lives. Only poets talk like that. But poetry has never had an answer for anything. All it does it bear witness. To despair. And desperate lives.

I had observed people whose identity crises around race seemed analogous to other people's identity crises around gender.

I think there's a million talented people out there, it's just a matter of luck a lot of the time.

After a few days, I mused, I would have no trouble. Whoever heard of a revolution of fat men?

The simpler we make things, the richer the experiences become.

You have to be passionate, you have to be engaged and you have to be contributing to the world.