P. L. Travers Quotes

Pooh, he’s a ninkypoop!” “How do you know?” asked Jane, very interested. “I know because I heard Daddy call him one this morning!” said Michael, and he laughed at Andrew very rudely. “He is not a nincompoop,” said Mary Poppins. “And that is that.

she wore so many brooches and necklaces and earrings that she jingled and jangled just like a brass band.

very quiet and still, as though it were thinking its own thoughts, or dreaming perhaps.

One and one makes two,' she declared. 'And two halves make a whole. And Faithful Friends should be together, never kept apart.

A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.

This is your new nurse, Mary Poppins.

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?

There they were, all together, up in the air

the Match-Man had two professions. He not only sold matches like any ordinary match-man, but he drew pavement pictures as well. He did these things turn-about according to the weather. If it was wet, he sold matches because the rain would have washed away his pictures if he had painted them. If it was fine, he was on his knees all day, making pictures in coloured chalks on the side-walks, and doing them so quickly that often you would find he had painted up one side of a street and down the other almost before you’d had time to come round the corner. On this particular day, which was fine but cold, he was painting.

And all the time he was enjoying his badness, hugging it to him as though it were a friend, and not caring a bit.

The lambs in their arms were as smooth as mushrooms, the flock at their heels unruffled. And amid all that froth of fleece, white and metrical as soap-suds, there was no sign of a black lamb.
What more could one ask, at a children’s Christmas Eve service? Yet I found that I did indeed want more, especially for the children’s sake — faces trodden by crows’-feet, signs of the ferment, one might almost say chaos, that this unprecedented event brought once and ever brings; something of life, even in carven faces, someone out of breath with running, someone stricken with joy.
And I dearly wanted a black lamb. For, without him, where are the ninety and nine? Flocks, like families, have need of their black sheep — he carries their sorrow for them. He is the other side of their whiteness. Does nobody understand, I wondered, that a crib without a black lamb is an incomplete statement?

"That's coral!" she cried in astonishment. "We must be down in the deeps of the sea!"
Well, wasn't that what you wanted?" said the trout. "I thought you wished you could see the sea!"
I did," said Jane, looking very surprised. "But I never expected the wish to come true."
Great oceans! Why bother to wish it then? I call that simply a waste of time. But come on! Mustn't be late for the party!

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.

You said you were the King of the Castle – and you’re not, not by any means! But that’s the Dirty Rascal.

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.