“The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective.”

— Raymond Chandler

letter, 19 April 1951, published in Raymond Chandler Speaking (1962)

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Raymond Chandler 124

Novelist, screenwriter 1888–1959

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“The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective.”

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