O.J.: Made in America Quotes

O.J. Simpson: [referring to his refusal to participate in racial tensions during the Watts riots] I'm not black, I'm O.J.

David Gascon: [referring to the many police units following the infamous Bronco] That wasn't a police chase, that's an "accompaniment".

Robin Greer: She was free and she was happy without him, and I think he knew it was really over. She was saying to herself, "I'm going to date who I want, I'm going to go where I want, I'm going to be friends with who I want. I'm free. You have lost me, O.J. Watch me run." There was something almost unattainable about her that he couldn't quite control, and I think that was part of the attraction, and I think in the final analysis that's what got her killed.

Carl Douglas: I went to an inner-city high school. Our football team was terrible, but our fighters were good. We might lose the fourth quarter in the ballgame, but we'd win the fifth quarter after the game, the fight. It's called "the fifth quarter." That was, at most, a two-year crime dripping wet. The judge in that case held the jury out until eleven o'clock on a Friday night thirteen years to the day of O.J. Simpson's verdict on October the third. That in my mind was not a coincidence. And the 33-year sentence - reflecting the 33 million dollars in the civil verdict - was no coincidence. And that was the fifth quarter. They got back at O.J. for winning our case. White America got back at O.J. for being aquitted of murder.

O.J. Simpson: [Referring to the Bruno Magli shoes he "claimed" he never owned] I would never wear those ugly-ass shoes.

Marcia Clark - Interviewee: [shocked upon learning OJ Simpson was arrested for armed robbery, burglary, and kidnapping] Are you kidding me? Seriously, are you kidding me? You walked away from a double murder.

Peter Hyams - Interviewee: [after the not guilty verdict was announced] I think the black jubilation was very offensive and very hurtful. The news footage of African Americans of all ages, sexes, backgrounds and occupations cheering and the whites crying... it put a huge red line across the American society. It existed back then, and it exists to this day.

Robert Lipsyte: He was telling me a story about being at a teammate's wedding with his wife, sitting at a table with mostly, as he said, "Negroes". And he overheard a white woman at the next table saying, "Look, there's O.J. sitting with all those niggers." And I remember, in my naïveté, saying to O.J., "Gee, wow, that must be terrible for you." He said, "No, it was great. Don't you understand? She knew that I wasn't black. She saw me as O.J." And really, at that moment, I thought he was fucked.

Zoey Tur: I've covered so many of these things. This was not usual police behavior. If O.J. Simpson were black, that shit wouldn't have happened. He'd be on the ground getting clubbed. But because he transcended race and color to this exalted state of celebrity, he got a motorcade.

Yolanda Crawford: [Asked why the jury took only four hours to reach a verdict after 267 days of trial] Two hundred and sixty-six nights. Two hundred sixty-six nights all alone, shut out from the world.

Carl Douglas: [talking about Marcia Clark's correct assertion that they manipulated the photos on O.J.'s wall] Marcia saw the wall, and she said, "Carl, you know damn well that he has never had this many black people on his wall in his entire life." I said, "Marcia! What are you talking about? How dare you accuse us of such things?"

Jeffrey Toobin: Really? O.J. Simpson as a civil rights victim? It was disgusting. It was appalling.

Yolanda Crawford: [after O.J. has tried on the bloody glove] I looked at Darden like, "I can't believe you did it. You let him play you. You are the weaker one, and you didn't have to be."

O.J. Simpson: [a video image of three cheerleaders lap-dancing on him] Thank you Jesus!

T. Larry Kirkland Sr.: I think each person who is in the limelight has an obligation to make things better for the last, the lost, the least, the left-out and the looked-over. And I thought he should have done more.

Peter Hyams - Interviewee: [talking about the studio decision regards to casting O.J. in Capricorn One] I thought there were worthy African American actors who had paid their dues as actors, who had shown their talent. My first choice was either Robert Hooks or Bernie Casey, so my reaction was less than enthusiastic. I had seen The Towering Inferno. I thought he was not going to frighten Daniel Day-Lewis. O.J. was a celebrity of enormous stature, and somebody who had not shown the chops to play the part. My goal was to see if I could make this guy work for what I wanted. It came time to do his last scene. He's a guy who's parched and delusional. So rather than him acting somebody who was desperately thirsty, I put appliances on his face that made it difficult for him to move and difficult to talk, and it just made him sound like he was in desperate trouble. And he was pretty good. You know, what can I say? He was a charming, terrific guy, he was a positive guy, he tried very hard, and it was clear that he saw a future for himself in film.

Marcia Clark - Interviewee: [Upon realizing that Mark Furhman perjured himself on the stand after the reveal of the tapes] What the fuck, dude?

Marcia Clark - Interviewee: [to reporters on her lawn] Why don't you get the fuck out of here, you fucking asshole!

Marcia Clark - Interviewee: [on whether to have OJ Simpson try on the leather gloves that was recovered from the crime scene at Rockingham and Bundy] Chris says I want to do it and I told him in no uncertain terms why we should not be doing this, and he said if we don't do this: they will, then I said let them and we can show why it was a bullshit experiment why it was never going to work between the shrinkage and the latex, it's never going to fit in the same way, don't do this: it was the biggest fight Chris and I ever had.

Fred Goldman: [referring to OJ Simpson answering the questions asked to him during his deposition in the civil lawsuit] He'd lied about everything! There's not one honest bone in his body. He's lived a life of fraud and being a fake for God knows how many decades, to a point where I think he just believes his own bull.

O.J. Simpson: [narrating first lines] As a kid growing up in the ghetto, one of the things I wanted the most was not money, it was fame. I wanted to be known, I wanted people to say, "hey there goes O.J."

Tom Lange: [describing the crime scene] When I got there, they had the scene pretty well secured. They had the entire block taped off, the front door was wide open, old music playing in the background, candles lit inside, it was a very violent confrontation: rage, two victims, blood everywhere. We found a glove, it was the left glove, and a blood trail, indicating the suspect has been wounded on the left side, so we're just getting into this, when we find out that this is apparently OJ Simpson and his "estranged" wife, they had two children asleep, a very brutal murder, someone's got to make death motivation for the next of kin, which is Simpson.

Ron Shipp: [referring to OJ Simpson after he was convicted for armed robbery and kidnapping] He kept pushing the envelope and why wouldn't he? I mean if I got away with everything time, after time, after time, "hey, I'm a God!"

Marcia Clark - Interviewee: [referring Mark Fuhrman, while he was testifying on the witness stand after committing perjury] I didn't even want to look at him. You have been a liar throughout and the only reason I know you didn't plant the glove because you couldn't have. Otherwise... I'm with them.

Marcia Clark - Interviewee: [referring to OJ's defense team] They really did it, they acquitted him. They really did it, they walked him out the door.

O.J. Simpson: [last lines, recorded on June 17, 1994] I don't know how I ended up here. I just don't know how I ended up here. I thought I lived a great life. I thought I treated everybody well. I went out of my way to make everybody comfortable and happy. I felt the goodness in myself and the goodness I gave people. I don't feel any goodness in myself right now. I feel empty. I feel totally empty. I felt I have some last thing I gotta say to somebody. Please remember me as the Juice. Please remember me as a good guy. Please.

Bill Hodgman: [after the not guilty verdict was read] Later I was talking with the deputy sheriff after he had taken jurors to where they were released. He said all across the parking lot there were high fives, cheers and smiles from black people and I heard it over and over: "That was payback for Rodney King."

Bill Hodgman: [how he felt after the not guilty verdict was read] It was almost like an outer body experience. I had a feeling of numbness. Did this really happen?

Bill Hodgman: [after studying the crime scene] I believe Nicole had come out of the house expecting Ron Goldman, she encountered OJ, then she was quickly subdued. There was evidence of blunt forced trauma near the crown of her head, possibly consistent with the testimony of the coroner.

Bill Hodgman: [after studying the crime scene] I believe she went down first: four stab wounds, three were deep ones, one shallow, inflicted on the left side of her neck. Her head was on the first step above the first pavement level where the rest of her body was. I believe Ron Goldman was on the scene after Nicole had been subdued. As Ron came upon Nicole as he moved forward to the fallen Nicole, OJ may have grabbed Ron from behind and probably had the knife at his throat.

Mark Fuhrman: [after studying the crime scene] Simpson's left hand was perhaps around Ron's chest and in the course of a short exchange which could've included some taunting, Simpson "poked" Ron in the right cheek five times and drew the knife away twice across his throat.

Bill Hodgman: I suspect Ron, in an effort to free himself from Simpson's grasp, went to the hand that was controlling him... Simpson's left hand... grabbed it, pulled it, probably in the process, wrenched the glove from his hand, hence the left glove on the ground at the scene.

Ron Shipp: I tried to leave there and OJ goes, "Shipp, hold up. They asked me to take a lie detector test, I told them 'no.'" I said, "What do you mean you told them 'no'?" And he says jokingly, "Truthfully, Shipp, I have had dreams of killing her." I said "I'm out of here."

Mark Fuhrman: [repeated line when questioned on the witness stand] I wish to assert my fifth amendment privilege.

Mark Witlock: [referring to OJ Simpson after he was convicted for armed robbery and kidnapping] That guy should've been the model citizen: he should've been in church every week, should've been helping kids, instead he did more to hurt African Americans young men and boys by putting on this "charade."

Mark Fuhrman: For you, this is a documentary. For me, it's the end of my life. I'm going to tell you a story: in 1989, I was married, I had a house, I had a daughter who was born in 1991, my son was born in 1993. I had this group of friends, unbelievable friends. Every one of them was different from me though. They all came from intact families, with fathers, houses they still go back to, rooms they still have, but they welcomed me into this group. I thought I had it made. I finally was really happy for the first time in my life.

O.J. Simpson: [at his parole hearing] When I first came here, I was a porter which comprised on cleaning things in the unit I was in and basically after a relatively short period of time I started working as a gym worker. I'd start each day disinfecting the workout equipment in the gym, mopping the floors, with the other group of us that work in the gym. I've coached teams since I've been here, I like to say, "We won the championship and we're old guys, a totally mixed group of players, " I didn't play, I just coached.

Jeffrey Toobin: Chris Darden saw that this case was becoming this weird referendum on the LAPD, on the history of race in Los Angeles. And Chris, he understood that history.

Bill Hodgman: [about Christopher Darden] He had a good reputation as somebody who could build a case. And, of course, most notably, Chris was black, and Marcia and I were not. I have to tell you personally, for all the cases I've tried, I never felt so white.

Carl Douglas: Every black lawyer idolized Johnnie Cochran in 1994. And I say, Chris Darden wanted to "out-Johnnie" Johnnie. He wanted to beat the man on the biggest stage of his career.

Marcia Clark - Interviewee: O.J. Simpson? Uh. I never heard of him until 1994. I was never into sports, and I couldn't even tell you what game he played. I thought he was a has-been.

Peter Hyams - Interviewee: I believed he was innocent. I was like everybody else, it was incomprehensible that my friend could do this. I snuck into the jail to see him and there's this guy that was my buddy and he looked emaciated. He was in an orange jumpsuit, and he was shackled to the desk in front of me. Then he looked at me on the other side of plexiglass, close as he could be, and he said, "I swear to God, I didn't do this." I believed him. He asked me if I kind of would be the chronicler of the whole thing. Would I write a book about the whole thing. I backed away from that. Then, in a moment of ultimate surrealism, I'm sitting with OJ and Lyle Menendez walks behind him. And I just went, shit, this is more than my little pea brain can handle.

Mark Fuhrman: [on his first encounter with OJ Simpson when he was a uniformed policeman] It was late December 1985. We got this call, and I didn't know whose house it was. I had never been on a call there before, but there had been ten, eleven, maybe twelve officers from my precinct that had been on various domestic disturbance calls in L.A. over the years... but not at that house. Simpson is standing on the left side of the driveway, by the shrubs, holding a baseball bat. Nicole is sitting on the front part of a 450SL Mercedes... the windshield smashed in, and she's bawling, heaving, I mean, almost uncontrollably. He's got this look on his face... like he's going to do battle. And I say, "Put the bat down." And he's got this look... this rage look. I said, "Put the bat down." He didn't do it the second time. I took out my baton, and I said firmly, "Put it down, now!" And then all of a sudden there was this calm that came over his face, he dropped it, and he goes, "Oh, sorry, Officer." And I went over, and she was still crying, and I said, "Do you want to make a report?" And she goes, "No." I remember saying this because it was... I think expressing my displeasure that she was allowing herself to be treated like this. I said, "It's your life."

Marcia Clark - Interviewee: [on the jurors] They just didn't care. They got it, I mean, you know, it's not that complicated. They didn't care. So...

Fred Goldman: [on being present during the deposition of O.J. Simpson for the civil trial] Listening to him was everything from disgust to astonishment.

Marcia Clark - Interviewee: In a civil trial, all you have to prove is that they're guilty by a preponderance of the evidence. That means more likely than not. 51% is enough. It's a very low standard of proof. Completely different than the criminal trial.

Fred Goldman: [after winning the civil trial] Total: $33,000,000. We were so shocked at the figure, it was astonishing. But what people don't realize about a civil trial is that a judgment is a piece of paper, and that is what you get. Then, it becomes the creditor's responsibility to figure out a way to collect on it.

Mike Gilbert: [on O.J. ordered to pay $33,000,000 to the Goldmans] Oh, he knew he'd never pay. Because the system wanted to make certain that they got everything he had, they brought in the guy that handles the estates of Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, and James Dean, to say that O.J. was in that same class, that he would make that kinda money for the rest of his life. As his agent, I'm sitting there, not gonna happen. Those people didn't murder anybody, or at least in the perception of America, he didn't murder anybody.

Fred Goldman: [on the book If I Did It] Everybody is more than willing to jump in and play his game. Because it's money for him and then it was gonna be money for them. Well, we wanted to put an end to it. As the largest debtor we got the rights to the book. So we read it and we were shocked. It was as close to the confession as you could ever get. We made one change and one change only: The title of the book. We took the word if and made it very small, and laid it into the letter I. So it was If... I Did It. We were hearing all over the place, we were wrong for doing it. You know what, it was, okay, you think we're wrong, so what?

Mike Gilbert: [after O.J. and his family moved to Florida where his home could not be confiscated by the Goldmans] Oh, God. Florida was like a nightmare. I hate everything about Florida, everything that's happened in Florida.

Mike Gilbert: One night, I went to Rockingham, and we're drinking Rolling Rock beer outside, and he was smoking pot. He was looking around the backyard, reliving all the different events that had happened there. And I just asked him, what happened June 12th? And he asked me what I thought happened. I said, "I have always thought you probably did it." I said, "I know what you told A.C., that you went there, but you just went to see what was going on, but you didn't take a knife." He shook his head and he said, "Yeah." And he said that if she wouldn't have opened the door with a knife, she'd still be alive. I believed that for the longest time. And then I... He went there to kill her. He went there to kill her because of how she made him feel, being rejected. That she didn't need him. And then, of course, the Marcus factor. He was seeing Marcus was him 15 years younger. And I guess the part that bothers me about it, is he left the kids upstairs to walk out. They could've walked out and found their mom like that. I die tomorrow, I would know without a doubt that he did it. Not even a slight maybe that he didn't.

Self - Interviewee: [on O.J. and his book If I Did It] At that point he not only needed the money, but thought in a while people would be less interested. You know, on some level he felt he was being forgotten. Like the years had gone by. Fame's a terrible beast. When you get a taste of that and people forget you, it's very hard. I needed to sit down with him and get his story, and it was emotionally difficult for him. He goes, "I'll tell you this. If I did it, I couldn't have done it alone." So there was someone else there. He said, "There might have been." And it was like he was playing this little game with me, but it wasn't a particularly clever game. Then he told me about the ride home, up the alley. I assumed he made a right and stopped at the traffic light, because I'd heard that somebody saw him. He said, "No, no, I didn't stop at that traffic light. I went up the alley and took a left, and went up Gretna Green to San Vincente and on home." And then he saw the look on my face. He says, "That's the way I would have gone, you know, had I done it." To me there was no doubt about it. He wasn't making this stuff up. I got there thinking he was a murderer, and I left there more convinced than ever that he was a murderer.