P.L. Travers Quotes & Sayings

'Friend Monkey' is really my favorite of all my books because the Hindu myth on which it is based is my favorite - the myth of the Monkey Lord who loved so much that he created chaos wherever he went. — P.L. Travers

But at the very moment she was thinking these thoughts, adventure, as she afterwards told my Mother, was stalking her. — P.L. Travers

Every child needs to have for itself not only its loving parents and siblings and friends of its own age, but a grown-up friend. — P.L. Travers

He knew, the moment he opened his eyes, that something was wrong but he was not quite sure what it was. — P.L. Travers

were spilt on his bib, Jane and Michael could tell that the substance in the spoon this time was milk. Then Barbara had her share, and she gurgled and licked the spoon twice. Mary Poppins then poured out another dose and solemnly took it herself. "Rum punch," she said, smacking her lips and corking the bottle. Jane's eyes and Michael's popped with astonishment, but they were not given much time to wonder, for Mary Poppins, having put the miraculous bottle on the mantelpiece, turned to them. "Now," she said, "spit-spot into bed." And she began to undress them. They noticed that whereas buttons and hooks had needed all sorts of coaxing from Katie Nanna, for Mary Poppins they flew apart almost at a look. In less than a minute they found themselves in bed and watching, by the dim light from the night-light, the rest of Mary Poppins's unpacking being performed. From the carpet bag she took out seven flannel nightgowns, four cotton ones, a pair of boots, a — P.L. Travers

You can ask me anything you like about my work, but I'll never talk about myself. — P.L. Travers

What is real and what is not? Can you tell me or I you? Perhaps we shall never know more than this - that to think a thing is to make it true. — P.L. Travers

A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns. — P.L. Travers

My family didn't like me going on the stage, and they didn't much like my being a writer, either. — P.L. Travers

I hate being good.
-Mary Poppins — P.L. Travers

I think that 'Mary Poppins' needs a subtle reader, in many respects, to grasp all its implications, and I understand that these cannot be translated in terms of the film. — P.L. Travers

Miss Lark had two gates. One was for Miss Lark's friends and relations, and the other for the Butcher and the Baker and the Milkman. Once the Baker made a mistake and came in through the gate reserved for the friends and relations, and Miss Lark was so angry that she said she wouldn't have any more bread ever. — P.L. Travers

If you want to find Cherry-Tree Lane all you have to do is ask the Policeman at the cross-roads. — P.L. Travers

More and more I've become convinced that the great treasure to possess is the unknown. — P.L. Travers

My father died when I was 7. I was his favorite child, and he was my beloved father. I brought him along with me all through my life. Every elderly man has a bit of my father in him for me. — P.L. Travers

Michael, "I never expected the wish to come true."
The Trout, "Great Oceans! Why bother to wish it, then? I call that simply a waste of time. — P.L. Travers

Mary Poppins," he cried, "you'll never leave us, will you? — P.L. Travers

Trouble trouble and it will trouble you. — P.L. Travers

Sorrow lies like a heartbeat behind everything I have written. — P.L. Travers

What I want to know is this: Are the stars gold paper or is the gold paper stars? — P.L. Travers

Who are you?" she inquired, as the cat passed by.
I'm the cat that looked at a king," he replied.
And I," she remarked with a toss of her head, "am the cow that jumped over the moon."
Is that so?" said the cat. "Whatever for?"
The cow stared. She had never been asked that question before. And suddenly it occured to her that there might something else to do than jumping over moons. — P.L. Travers

So it was settled, and that was how the Banks family came to live at Number Seventeen, with Mrs. Brill to cook for them, — P.L. Travers

I'm not asleep," Jane reassured her. "I'm thinking about the story." "I heard every word," said Michael, yawning. The Park Keeper rocked, as if in a trance. "A Nex-plorer in disguise," he murmured, "sittin' in the midnight sun and climbin' the North Pole!" "Ouch! — P.L. Travers

I was brought up Irish, where there was room for my own private world. — P.L. Travers

Pooh, he's a ninkypoop!" "How do you know?" asked Jane, very interested. "I know because I heard Daddy call him one this morning!" said Michael, and he laughed at Andrew very rudely. "He is not a nincompoop," said Mary Poppins. "And that is that. — P.L. Travers

...it is the smallest house in the Lane. And besides that, it is the only one that is rather dilapidated and needs a coat of paint. But Mr. Banks, who owns it, said to Mrs. Banks that she could have either a nice, clean, comfortable house or four children. But not both, for he couldn't afford it. And after Mrs. Banks had given the matter some consideration she came to the conclusion that she would rather have Jane...and Michael...and John and Barbara, who were Twins and came last. So it was settled... — P.L. Travers

Next time you must stay for tea and we'll all sit together on a rock and sing a song to the moon — P.L. Travers

There are worlds beyond worlds and times beyond times, all of them true, all of them real, and all of them (as children know) penetrating each other. — P.L. Travers

I never wrote my books especially for children. — P.L. Travers

That's coral!" she cried in astonishment. "We must be down in the deeps of the sea!"
Well, wasn't that what you wanted?" said the trout. "I thought you wished you could see the sea!"
I did," said Jane, looking very surprised. "But I never expected the wish to come true."
Great oceans! Why bother to wish it then? I call that simply a waste of time. But come on! Mustn't be late for the party! — P.L. Travers

And all the time he was enjoying his badness, hugging it to him as though it were a friend, and not caring a bit. — P.L. Travers

I've felt that if I just used initials nobody would know whether I was a man or a woman, a dog or a tiger. I could hide from view, like a bat on the underside of a branch. — P.L. Travers

Why," said Jane, "there's nothing in it!" "What do you mean - nothing?" demanded Mary Poppins, drawing herself up and looking as though she had been insulted. "Nothing in it, did you say?" And with that she took out from the empty bag a starched white apron and tied it round her waist. Next she unpacked a large cake of Sunlight Soap, a toothbrush, a packet of hairpins, a bottle of scent, a small folding armchair and a box of throat lozenges. — P.L. Travers

You do not chop off a section of your imaginative substance and make a book specifically for children, for - if you are honest - you have no idea where childhood ends and maturity begins. It is all endless and all one. — P.L. Travers

And here it is worth while remembering, since we are discussing Not Writing for Children, that neither the Sleeping Beauty nor Rumpelstiltzkin was really written for children. In fact, none of the fundamental fairy stories was ever written at all. They all arose spontaneously from the folk and were transmitted orally from generation to generation to unlettered listeners of all ages. — P.L. Travers

Well, au revoir, one and all. — P.L. Travers

The Irish, as a race, have the oral tradition in their blood. A direct question to them is an anathema, but in other cases, a mere syllable of a hero's name will elicit whole chapters of stories. — P.L. Travers

For me, there are no answers, only questions, and I am grateful that the questions go on and on. I don't look for an answer because I don't think there is one. I'm very glad to be the bearer of a question. — P.L. Travers

Once we have accepted the story we cannot escape the story's fate. — P.L. Travers

Mary Poppins was very vain and liked to look her best. Indeed, she was quite sure that she never looked anything else. — P.L. Travers

She paused, as though she were remembering events that happened hundreds of years before that time. — P.L. Travers

Tea is balm for the soul, don't you agree? — P.L. Travers

I don't think that children, if left to themselves, feel that there is an author behind a book, a somebody who wrote it. Grown-ups have fostered this quotient of identity, particularly teachers. Write a letter to your favorite author and so forth. When I was a child I never realized that there were authors behind books. Books were there as living things, with identities of their own. — P.L. Travers

Do you think that everything in the world is inside something else? My little Park inside the big one and the big one inside a larger one? Again and again? Away and away?" She waved her arm to take in the sky. "And to someone very far out there - do you think we would look like ants?" "Ants — P.L. Travers

Robertson Ay was sitting in the garden busily doing nothing. — P.L. Travers

Sir Christopher Wren's Cathedral — P.L. Travers

I'm the Waiter, you know! — P.L. Travers

Mary Poppins never told anybody anything. . . . — P.L. Travers

And what's more, he'll go and live with his friend unless his friend is allowed to come in and live with him ... His friend must have a silk cushion just like his and sleep in your room too. Otherwise he will go and sleep in the coal-cellar with his friend — P.L. Travers

I think the idea of 'Mary Poppins' has been blowing in and out of me, like a curtain at a window, all my life. — P.L. Travers

it may be that to eat and be eaten are the same thing in the end. My wisdom tells me that this is probably so. We are all made of the same stuff, remember, we of the Jungle, you of the City. The same substance composes us - the tree overhead, the stone beneath us, the bird, the beast, the star - we are all one, all moving to the same end. Remember — P.L. Travers

A very excellent and worthy person, thoroughly reliable in every particular. — P.L. Travers

All right, indeed! That was hardly the word. All right, in her blue jacket with the silver buttons! All right with her gold locket round her neck! All right with the parrot-headed umbrella under her arm! — P.L. Travers

Carpet," said Mary Poppins, putting her key in the lock. — P.L. Travers

Michael knew now what was happening to him. He knew he was going to be naughty. — P.L. Travers

Oh, go away! You're in my eyes," said John in a loud voice.

"Sorry!" said the sunlight. "I must move from East to West in a day. Sorry! Shut your eyes and you won't see me. — P.L. Travers

When I was a child, love to me was what the sea is to a fish: something you swim in while you are going about the important affairs of life. — P.L. Travers

Children's books are looked on as a sideline of literature. A special smile. They are usually thought to be associated with women. I was determined not to have this label of sentimentality put on me so I signed by my intials, hoping people wouldn't bother to wonder if the books were written by a man, woman or kangaroo. — P.L. Travers

The same substance composes us
the tree overhead, the stone beneath us, the bird, the beast, the star
we are all one, all moving to the same end. — P.L. Travers

I shouldn't wonder if you didn't wonder much too much! — P.L. Travers

she wore so many brooches and necklaces and earrings that she jingled and jangled just like a brass band. — P.L. Travers

You can't expect two stars to drop in the same field in one lifetime — P.L. Travers

Stories are like birds flying, here and gone in a moment. — P.L. Travers

Don't you know that everybody's got a Fairyland of their own? — P.L. Travers

And when, at last, ... I stood in London with ten pounds in my hand - five of which I promptly lost - the ancestors dwelling in my blood who, all my life, had summoned me with insistent eldritch voices, murmured together, like contented cats. — P.L. Travers

Nothing I had written before 'Mary Poppins' had anything to do with children, and I have always assumed, when I thought about it at all, that she had come out of the same wall of nothingness as the poetry, myth and legend that had absorbed me all my writing life. — P.L. Travers

We're on the brink of an Adventure. Don't spoil it by asking questions! — P.L. Travers

Child and serpent, star and stone - all one. — P.L. Travers

Perhaps we are born knowing the tales of our grandmothers and all their ancestral kin continually run in our blood repeating them endlessly, and the shock they give us when we first bear them is not of surprise but of recognition. — P.L. Travers

She sounds like you, Mary Poppins,' said Michael. 'So terribly pleased with herself! — P.L. Travers

I cannot summon up inspiration; I myself am summoned. — P.L. Travers

Michael, you shall have some syrup of figs. — P.L. Travers

I've had quite a lot to conquer in myself apart from writing. Not that I've been a pure angel when I come to the end of it. — P.L. Travers

This is the way the wheel turns, coming at last to full circle, with wild as well as tame at he crib; lion and turtle-dove together an barnyard beasts lying down with the fox. For wild and tame are but two hlaves and here, where all begins and ends, everything must be whole.
And always, among the sleepers, there must be somebody waking - somewhere, someone, waking and watchful. Or what would happen to the world..? — P.L. Travers

The eternal opposites meet and kiss. The wolf and the lamb lie down together, the dove and the serpent share one nest. The stars bend down and touch the earth and the young and the old forgive each other. Night and day meet here, so do the poles. The East leans over towards the West and the circle is complete. — P.L. Travers

My wisdom tells me that this is probably so. We are all made of the same stuff, remember, we of the Jungle, you of the City. The same substance composes us - the tree overhead, the stone beneath us, the bird, the beast, the star - we are all one, all moving to the same end. Remember that when you no longer remember me, my child." "But — P.L. Travers

This is your new nurse, Mary Poppins. — P.L. Travers

Mary Poppins is not a fairy-tale."
"She's even better!" said Alfred loyally. "She's a fairy-tale come true. — P.L. Travers

The Red Cow was very respectable, she always behaved like a perfect lady and she knew What was What. — P.L. Travers

He could smell her crackling white apron and the faint flavour of toast that always hung about her so deliciously. — P.L. Travers

With the word creative we stand under a mystery. And from time to time that mystery, as if it were a sun, sends down upon one head or another, a sudden shaft of light - by grace, one feels, rather than deserving, for it always is something given, free, unsought, unexpected. — P.L. Travers

Could it be ... that the hero is one who is willing to set out, take the first step, shoulder something? Perhaps the hero is one who puts his foot upon a path not knowing what he may expect from life but in some way feeling in his bones that life expects something of him. — P.L. Travers