Joseph Wambaugh Quotes

• You’ve got people who are looking at DNA evidence and other evidence like that and they’re ignoring it.

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

• What I didn’t know was that if I didn’t stand with my back to the wall, Hollywood people would unscrew my ass and sell it down the river.

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

• The time has come for professional jurors.

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

• 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.

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  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.

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

• 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.

  Joseph Wambaugh

• 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.

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

Joseph Wambaugh (23)

Birth:	22nd January, 1937
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Police Officer, Writer

Related Authors

• Kiran Bedi
• Joe Arpaio
• Thaksin Shinawatra
• Lasse Viren
• Erik Estrada
• Robert Fanney
• Frank Jordan
• Daryl Gates
• Joseph Wambaugh
• Richard Jewell

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 25th December

Births

• 1957 - Shane MacGowan
• 1908 - Quentin Crisp
• 1876 - Muhammad Ali Jinnah
• 1888 - Sonya Levien
• 1948 - Barbara Mandrell

Deaths

• 1962 - Warren R. Austin
• 1635 - Samuel De Champlain
• 1989 - Alfred Manuel Martin Jr
• 1946 - W. C. Fields
• 1938 - Karel Capek