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

 

Don't you know that everybody's got a Fairyland of their own? P. L. Travers

More and more I’ve become convinced that the great treasure to possess is the unknown. P. L. Travers ,"P. L. Travers, The Art of Fiction No. 63" an interview by Edwina Burness, The Paris Review No. 86, Winter, 1982.  

There are worlds beyond worlds and times beyond times, all of them true, all of them real, and all of them (as children know) penetrating each other. 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

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 "The World of the Hero". Book by P. L. Travers, 1976.

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

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

Trouble trouble and it will trouble you. P. L. Travers (2014). “Mary Poppins: 80th Anniversary Collection”, p.198, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 

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

I hate being good. -Mary Poppins 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

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 

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

Child and serpent, star and stone — all one. P. L. Travers (2014). “Mary Poppins: 80th Anniversary Collection”, p.175, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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

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,  "No Word for Time: The Way of the Algonquin People". Book by Evan T. Pritchard, 2001.

I don't think that children, if left to themselves, feel that there is an author behind a book, a somebody who wrote it. Grown-ups have fostered this quotient of identity, particularly teachers. Write a letter to your favorite author and so forth. When I was a child I never realized that there were authors behind books. Books were there as living things, with identities of their own. P. L. Travers

You can ask me anything you like about my work, but I'll never talk about myself. 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 no idea where childhood ends and maturity begins. It is all endless and all one. P. L. Travers

What I want to know is this: Are the stars gold paper or is the gold paper stars? P. L. Travers (2014). “Mary Poppins: 80th Anniversary Collection”, p.138, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 

If you want to find Cherry-Tree Lane all you have to do is ask the Policeman at the cross-roads. P. L. Travers (2014). “Mary Poppins: 80th Anniversary Collection”, p.17, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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 (2014). “Mary Poppins: 80th Anniversary Collection”, p.174, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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 (2014). “Mary Poppins: 80th Anniversary Collection”, p.174, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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