Top 70 P.L. Travers Quotes (2025 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. “Once we have accepted the story we cannot escape the story’s fate.”

— P.L. Travers

4. “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

5. “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

6. “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

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

— P.L. Travers

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

— P.L. Travers

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

— P.L. Travers

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

— P.L. Travers

11. “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

12. “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

13. “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

14. “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

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

— P.L. Travers

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

— P.L. Travers

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

— P.L. Travers

18. “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

19. “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

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

— P.L. Travers

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

— P.L. Travers

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

— P.L. Travers

23. “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

24. “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

25. “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

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

— P.L. Travers

27. “Well, au revoir, one and all.”

— P.L. Travers

28. “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

29. “All good things come to an end, sometime,” said Mary Poppins primly.”

— P.L. Travers

30. “But nobody ever knew what Mary Poppins felt about it, for Mary Poppins never told anybody anything.”

— P.L. Travers

31. “You should trust the children; they can stand more than we can.”

— P.L. Travers

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

— P.L. Travers

33. “I shouldn’t wonder if you didn’t wonder much too much!”

— P.L. Travers

34. “He could smell her crackling white apron and the faint flavour of toast that always hung about her so deliciously.”

— P.L. Travers

35. “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

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

— P.L. Travers

37. “Down below, just outside the front door, stood Mary Poppins, dressed in her coat and hat, with her carpet bag in one hand and her umbrella in the other.”

— P.L. Travers

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

— P.L. Travers

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

— P.L. Travers

40. “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

41. “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

42. “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

43. “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

44. “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

45. “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

46. “If I were some people,” she remarked acidly, “I’d mind my own business!”

— P.L. Travers

47. “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

48. “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

49. “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

50. “You don’t look too blooming,” he said to Mary Poppins. “But then, nobody does – – ” Mary Poppins tossed her head. “Speak for yourself,” she said crossly, and flounced to the door, pushing the perambulator so fiercely that it bumped into a bag of oysters.”

— P.L. Travers