P. L. Travers Quotes

31 Sourced Quotes

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. … when you read the Ramayana you'll come across the story of Hanuman on which I built my version of that very old myth.

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
Since 1939, however, there have been no bonfires on the village greens. No fireworks gleam in the blackened parks and the streets are dark and silent. But this darkness will not last forever. There will some day come a Fifth of November — or another date, it doesn't matter — when fires will burn in a chain of brightness from Land's End to John O' Groats. The children will dance and leap about them as they did in the times before. They will take each other by the hand and watch the rockets breaking, and afterwards they will go home singing to the houses full of light...

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
Mary Poppins herself had flown away, but the gifts she had brought would remain for always..

P. L. Travers
The Sphinx, the Pyramids, the stone temples are, all of them, ultimately, as flimsy as London Bridge; our cities but tents set up in the cosmos. We pass. But what the bee knows, the wisdom that sustains our passing life — however much we deny or ignore it — that for ever remains.

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 that when you no longer remember me, my child.

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

P. L. Travers
Mrs. Banks did not notice what was happening behind her, but Jane and Michael, watching from the top landing, had an excellent view of the extraordinary thing the visitor now did.
Certainly she followed Mrs. Banks upstairs, but not in the usual way. With her large bag in her hands she slid gracefully up the banisters, and arrived at the landing at the same time as Mrs. Banks. Such a thing, Jane and Michael knew, had never been done before. Down, of course, for they had often done it themselves. But up — never! They gazed curiously at the strange new visitor.

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, in fact, no idea where childhood ends and maturity begins. It is all endless and all one.

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
What I want to know is this: Are the stars gold paper or is the gold paper stars?

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
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 initials, hoping people wouldn't bother to wonder if the books were written by a man, woman or kangaroo.

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
[Jane] was watching Mrs. Corry splashing the glue on the sky and Mary Poppins sticking on the star. "What I want to know," said Jane, "is this: Are the stars gold paper or is the gold paper stars?" There was no reply to her question and she did not expect one. She knew that only someone very much wiser than Michael could give her the right answer.

P. L. Travers
You know C. S. Lewis, whom I greatly admire, said there's no such thing as creative writing. I've always agreed with that and always refuse to teach it when given the opportunity. He said there is, in fact, only one Creator and we mix. That's our function, to mix the elements He has given us. See how wonderfully anonymous that leaves us? You can't say, "I did this; this gross matrix of flesh and blood and sinews and nerves did this." What nonsense! I'm given these things to make a pattern out of. Something gave it to me.

P. L. Travers
In the village where I live, in Sussex, we made our bonfire in the Vicarage paddock and every year, as soon as it was lit, the Vicar's cow would begin to dance. She danced while the flames rose up to the sky, she danced till the ashes were black and cold. And the next morning — it was always the same — the Vicar would have no milk for his breakfast. It is strange to think of a simple cow rejoicing at the saving of Parliament so many years ago.

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
If you want to find Cherry-Tree Lane all you have to do is ask the Policeman at the cross-roads. He will push his helmet slightly to one side, scratch his head thoughtfully, and then he will point his huge white-gloved finger and say: "First to your right, second to your left, sharp right again, and you're there. Good-morning."
And sure enough, if you follow his directions exactly, you will be there — right in the middle of Cherry-Tree Lane, where the houses run down one side and the Park runs down the other and the cherry-trees go dancing right down the middle.
If you are looking for Number Seventeen — and it is more than likely that you will be, for this book is all about that particular house — you will very soon find it.

P. L. Travers
A great friend of mine at the beginning of our friendship (he was himself a poet) said to me very defiantly, "I have to tell you that I loathe children's books." And I said to him, "Well, won't you just read this just for my sake?" And he said grumpily, "Oh, very well, send it to me." I did, and I got a letter back saying: "Why didn't you tell me? Mary Poppins with her cool green core of sex has me enthralled forever."

P. L. Travers
She doesn't hold back anything from them. When they beg her not to depart, she reminds them that nothing lasts forever. She's as truthful as the nursery rhymes. Remember that all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty-Dumpty together again. There's such a tremendous truth in that. It goes into children in some part of them that they don't know, and indeed perhaps we don't know. But eventually they realize — and that's the great truth.

P. L. Travers
Presently they saw their Mother coming out of the drawing-room with a visitor following her. Jane and Michael could see that the newcomer had shiny black hair — "Rather like a wooden Dutch doll," whispered Jane. And that she was thin, with large feet and hands, and small, rather peering blue-eyes.
"You'll find that they are very nice children," Mrs. Banks was saying.
Michael's elbow gave a sharp dig at Jane's ribs.
"And that they give no trouble at all," continued Mrs. Banks uncertainly, as if she herself didn't really believe what she was saying. They heard the visitor sniff as though she didn't either.
"Now, about reference —" Mrs. Banks went on.
"Oh, I make it a rule never to give references," said the other firmly.

P. L. Travers
Tonight the small are free from the great and the great protect the small.

P. L. Travers
It is only through the ordinary that the extraordinary can make itself perceived.

P. L. Travers