JOSEPH WAMBAUGH

The time has come for professional jurors.

Every time I write a nonfiction book I get sued.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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