Joseph Wambaugh

“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.”

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

“You've got people who are looking at DNA evidence and other evidence like that and they're ignoring it.”

“As a cop, I dealt with every kind of bum and criminal. They all have more integrity than some Hollywood people.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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

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

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

“Civil servants take forever to do anything.”