P. L. Travers

Trouble trouble and it will trouble you.

— P. L. Travers

Child and serpent, star and stone — all one.

— P. L. Travers

I cannot summon up inspiration; I myself am summoned.

— P. L. Travers

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

— P. L. Travers

Sorrow lies like a heartbeat behind everything I have written.

— P. L. Travers

I never wrote my books especially for children.

— P. L. Travers

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

— P. L. Travers

Tea is balm for the soul, don't you agree?

— P. L. Travers

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

— 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…

— 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…

— 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

“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

Every child needs to have for itself not only its loving parents and siblings and friends of its own age, but a…

— 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

When I was a child, love to me was what the sea is to a fish: something you swim in while you…

— 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…

— 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…

— P. L. Travers

You do not chop off a section of your imaginative substance and make a book specifically for children, for - if you…

— 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…

— 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…

— P. L. Travers

'Friend Monkey' is really my favorite of all my books because the Hindu myth on which it is based is my favorite…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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.…

— P. L. Travers

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

— 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…

— P. L. Travers

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

— 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

The same substance composes us--the tree overhead, the stone beneath us, the bird, the beast, the star--we are all one, all moving…

— P. L. Travers

Could it be ... that the hero is one who is willing to set out, take the first step, shoulder something? Perhaps…

— 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,…

— P. L. Travers