Top 70 P.L. Travers Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “I hate being good. -Mary Poppins.”

— P.L. Travers

2. “Don’t you know that everybody’s got a Fairyland of their own?”

— P.L. Travers

3. “What I want to know is this: Are the stars gold paper or is the gold paper stars?”

— P.L. Travers

4. “Once we have accepted the story we cannot escape the story’s fate.”

— P.L. Travers

5. “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

6. “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

7. “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

8. “I’ll stay till the wind changes,” she said.”

— P.L. Travers

9. “Mary Poppins,” he cried, “you’ll never leave us, will you?”

— P.L. Travers

10. “Well, au revoir, one and all.”

— P.L. Travers

11. “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.”

— P.L. Travers

12. “A very excellent and worthy person, thoroughly reliable in every particular.”

— P.L. Travers

13. “You can’t expect two stars to drop in the same field in one lifetime.”

— P.L. Travers

14. “Mary Poppins sighed with pleasure, however, when she saw three of herself, each wearing a blue coat with silver buttons and a blue hat to match. She thought it was such a lovely sight that she wished there had been a dozen of her or even thirty. The more Mary Poppins the better.”

— P.L. Travers

15. “Mary Poppins walked down the garden path and opened the gate. Once outside in the Lane, she set off walking very quickly as if she were afraid the afternoon would run away from her if she didn’t keep up with it. At the corner she turned to the right and then to the left, nodded haughtily to the Policeman, who said it was a nice day, and by that time she felt that her Day Out had begun.”

— P.L. Travers

16. “This is your new nurse, Mary Poppins.”

— P.L. Travers

17. “We’re on the brink of an Adventure. Don’t spoil it by asking questions!”

— P.L. Travers

18. “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

19. “She’s saying it! She’s saying it!” cried Jane, holding tight to herself for fear she would break in two with delight. And she was saying it. The Bird Woman was there and she was saying it. “Feed the Birds, Tuppence a Bag! Feed the Birds, Tuppence a Bag! Feed the Birds, Feed the Birds, Tuppence a Bag, Tuppence a Bag!”

— P.L. Travers

20. “A very old-fashioned idea, to my mind,” Jane and Michael heard the stern voice say. “Very old-fashioned. Quite out of date, as you might say.”

— P.L. Travers

21. “Carpet,” said Mary Poppins, putting her key in the lock.”

— P.L. Travers

22. “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

23. “She sounds like you, Mary Poppins,′ said Michael. ‘So terribly pleased with herself!”

— P.L. Travers

24. “Good-bye,” said Michael to the Bird Woman. “Feed the Birds,” she replied, smiling. “Good-bye,” said Jane. “Tuppence a Bag!” said the Bird Woman and waved her hand.”

— P.L. Travers

25. “There they were, all together, up in the air.”

— P.L. Travers

26. “I’m the Waiter, you know!”

— P.L. Travers

27. “Bird and beast and stone and star – we are all one, all one – – ” murmured the Hamadryad, softly folding his hood about him as he himself swayed between the children.”

— P.L. Travers

28. “She’s something special, you see. Not in the matter of looks, of course. One of my own day-old chicks is handsomer than Mary P. ever was – –.”

— P.L. Travers

29. “The Dolphins were after it in a second, two dark striving shapes rippling through the water. Jane and Michael could hardly breathe. Which would win the prize? Or would the prize escape?”

— P.L. Travers

30. “We Butchers, you know, like a bit of company. And we don’t often get the chance of talking to a nice, handsome young lady like you – – ” He broke off suddenly, for he had caught sight of Mary Poppins’s face.”

— P.L. Travers

31. “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

32. “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

33. “Robertson Ay was sitting in the garden busily doing nothing.”

— P.L. Travers

34. “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

35. “Tea is balm for the soul, don’t you agree?”

— P.L. Travers

36. “If you want to find Cherry-Tree Lane all you have to do is ask the Policeman at the cross-roads.”

— P.L. Travers

37. “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

38. “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

39. “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

40. “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

41. “Stories are like birds flying, here and gone in a moment.”

— P.L. Travers

42. “You can ask me anything you like about my work, but I’ll never talk about myself.”

— P.L. Travers

43. “Child and serpent, star and stone – all one.”

— P.L. Travers

44. “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

45. “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

46. “I was brought up Irish, where there was room for my own private world.”

— P.L. Travers

47. “Trouble trouble and it will trouble you.”

— P.L. Travers

48. “More and more I’ve become convinced that the great treasure to possess is the unknown.”

— P.L. Travers

49. “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

50. “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