Quotes from Joseph Wambaugh

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

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

All the Catholic Church ever had been was ritual and mystery and guilt. And that was Everything. That was Order. Who could wish for more from God or man? Perfect Order.

Hareem was speaking with the

The problems began almost immediately for the Hollywood Division CRO because, according to unofficial reports to the office of the chief of police, Hollywood was not like anywhere else. In fact, the unofficial report referred to Hollywood as "America's kook capital.

The very best, most optimistic hope we can cling to is that we're tic birds who ride the rhino's back and eat the parasites out of the flesh and keep the beast from disease and hope we're not parasites too. In the end we suspect it's all vanity and delusion. Parasites, all of us." "Yeah

was always taught that the man is the master of the house and you just accept what he wants.

And at last, the courtroom rail birds were going to get a chance to hear something titillating. About John Orr getting his mongoose milked by an honest-to-God cop.

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.

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.

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.

Civil servants take forever to do anything.

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

Every time I write a nonfiction book I get sued.

The time has come for professional jurors.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

No, policemen were not danger lovers, they were seekers of the awesome, the incredible, even the unspeakable in human experience. Never mind whether they could interpret, never mind if it was potentially hazardous to the soul. To be there was the thing.

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