Joseph Wambaugh Quotes & Sayings

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

Nothing could be more fearful than losing one's freedom. To be confined. Never to see a golden cloudburst or rivers of sunlight on dark flowers. never to walk your own cultivated furrows. And the memory dangled over his heart like the sword of Damocles. — Joseph Wambaugh

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

You have to experience it, in order to speak about it with authority. Joseph Wambaugh says it with an air of that same authenticity, in his stories of contemporary Police activities, and, with a disarming tongue in cheek, frankness. — Joseph Wambaugh

Bill Bradfield gave Jack Holtz the stare, but Jack Holtz stared back and said, "That bullshit only works on intelligent people. — Joseph Wambaugh

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

Every time I write a nonfiction book I get sued. — Joseph Wambaugh

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Joseph Wambaugh

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

seemed constant, even as to old opinions. Shelly now held a master's degree from Notre — Joseph Wambaugh

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. — Joseph Wambaugh

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

The time has come for professional jurors. — Joseph Wambaugh

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

Civil servants take forever to do anything. — Joseph Wambaugh

I mean that a battered child has a marvelous capacity to adjust to his torture and will ceaselessly love his battering parents. I mean that the mother of a sexually molested child will not leave nor truly protect the child from the father as long as the man has a good job or otherwise preserves that mother from an economic life which is more horrifying to her than the molestation of her child. I mean that the weakness of the human race is stupefying and that it's not the capacity for evil which astounds young policemen like you and me, Dean. Rather it's the mind boggling worthlessness of human beings. There's not enough dignity in mankind for evil and that's the most terrifying thing a policeman learns. — 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

When Vince was through talking that day, one of the grand jurors said, "Explain to me, to all of us, why in the world didn't you at some time go to Mrs. Reinert and warn her?" And by now Vince knew he'd spend the rest of his life being asked that question. And by now he knew that even when the words were not being uttered, the eyes were asking it. — Joseph Wambaugh

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

Flotsam said, "He thinks I shouldn't do surfboard self-defense on four squids that flip us off and stole my juices when I was rippin'. They thought it was cooleo till one of them caught my log upside his head when I snaked him on the next wave."

"What?" Ronnie said.

"All I said was," Jetsam said to Flotsam, "You should cap the little surf Nazi if you wanna turn him into part of the food chain, not torpedo him till he's almost dead in the foamy. — 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

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