Top 70 P.L. Travers Quotes (2024 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. “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

4. “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

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

— P.L. Travers

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

— P.L. Travers

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

— P.L. Travers

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

— P.L. Travers

10. “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

11. “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

12. “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

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

— P.L. Travers

14. “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

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

— P.L. Travers

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

— P.L. Travers

17. “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

18. “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

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

— P.L. Travers

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

— P.L. Travers

21. “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

22. “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

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

— P.L. Travers

24. “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

25. “Well, au revoir, one and all.”

— P.L. Travers

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

— P.L. Travers

27. “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

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

— P.L. Travers

29. “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

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

— P.L. Travers

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

— P.L. Travers

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

— P.L. Travers

33. “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

34. “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

35. “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

36. “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

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 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

39. “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

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

— P.L. Travers

41. “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

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

— P.L. Travers

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

— P.L. Travers

44. “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

45. “But at the very moment she was thinking these thoughts, adventure, as she afterwards told my Mother, was stalking her.”

— P.L. Travers

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

— P.L. Travers

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

— P.L. Travers

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

— P.L. Travers

49. “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

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

— P.L. Travers