50 Quotes by Joseph Wambaugh

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

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

The time has come for professional jurors.

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.

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.

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

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.

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