P. L. Travers Quotes

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

Sir Christopher Wren’s Cathedral

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

Robertson Ay was sitting in the garden busily doing nothing.

That all you got, Bert?” said Mary Poppins, and she said it so brightly you could hardly tell she was disappointed at all. “That’s the lot,” he said. “Business is bad today. You’d think anybody’d be glad to pay to see that, wouldn’t you?” And he nodded his head at Queen Elizabeth. “Well — that’s how it is, Mary,” he sighed. “Can’t take you to tea today, I’m afraid.” Mary Poppins thought of the raspberry-jam-cakes they always had on her Day Out, and she was just going to sigh, when she saw the Match-Man’s face. So, very cleverly, she turned the sigh into a smile — a good one with both ends turned up — and said: “That’s all right, Bert. Don’t you mind. I’d much rather not go to tea. A stodgy meal, I call it — really.” And that, when you think how very much she liked raspberry-jam-cakes, was rather nice of Mary Poppins. The Match-Man apparently thought so, too, for he took her white-gloved hand in his and squeezed it hard. Then together they walked down the row of pictures. “Now, there’s one you’ve never seen before!” said the Match-Man proudly, pointing to a painting of a mountain covered with snow and its slopes simply littered with grasshoppers sitting on gigantic roses. This time Mary Poppins could indulge in a sigh without hurting his feelings. “Oh, Bert,” she said, “that’s a fair treat!” And by the way she said it she made him feel that by rights the picture should have been in the Royal Academy, which is a large room where people hang the pictures they have painted. Everybody comes to see them, and when they have looked at them for a very long time, everybody says to everybody else: “The idea — my dear!” The next picture Mary Poppins and the Match-Man came to was even better. It was the country — all trees and grass and a little bit of blue sea in the distance, and something that looked like Margate in the background. “My word!” said Mary Poppins admiringly, stooping so that she could see it better. “Why, Bert, whatever is the matter?” For the Match-Man had caug

Every bed has a right and a wrong side,” said Mary Poppins, primly. “Not mine — it’s next the wall.” “That makes no difference. It’s still a side,” scoffed Mary Poppins. “Well, is the wrong side the left side or is the wrong side the right side? Because I got out on the right side, so how can it be wrong?

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.

The true fairytales … come straight out of myth; they are, as it were, minuscule reaffirmation of myths, or perhaps the myth made accessible to the local folky mind. One might say that fairytales are the myths falling into time and locality … is the same stuff, all the essentials are there, it is small, but perfect. Not minimized, not to be made digestible for children.

"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!

I make a point of writing, if only a little, every day, as a kind of discipline so that it is not a whim but a piece of work.

My Zen master, because I’ve studied Zen for a long time, told me that every one (and all the stories weren’t written then) of the Mary Poppins stories is in essence a Zen story. And someone else, who is a bit of a Don Juan, told me that every one of the stories is a moment of tremendous sexual passion, because it begins with such tension and then it is reconciled and resolved in a way that is gloriously sensual. … 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.”

All right, indeed! That was hardly the word. All right, in her blue jacket with the silver buttons! All right with her gold locket round her neck! All right with the parrot-headed umbrella under her arm!

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?

unpacked a large cake of Sunlight Soap, a toothbrush, a packet of hairpins, a bottle of scent, a small folding armchair and a box of throat lozenges. Jane and Michael stared. “But I saw,” whispered Michael. “It was empty.” “Hush!” said Jane, as Mary Poppins took out a large bottle labelled “One Tea-Spoon to be Taken at Bed-Time.” A spoon was attached to the neck of the bottle, and into this Mary Poppins poured a dark crimson fluid. “Is that your medicine?” enquired Michael, looking very interested. “No, yours,” said Mary Poppins, holding out the spoon to him. Michael stared. He wrinkled up his nose. He began to protest. “I don’t want it. I don’t need it. I won’t!” But Mary Poppins’s eyes were fixed upon him, and Michael suddenly discovered that you could not look at Mary Poppins and disobey her. There was something strange and extraordinary about her — something that was frightening and at the same time most exciting.

Thank you, ma’am,” said Mary Poppins with icy politeness. “But I bring the children up in my own way and take advice from nobody,