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 grown-up friend.”

“I think the idea of 'Mary Poppins' has been blowing in and out of me, like a curtain at a window, all my life.”

“Nothing I had written before 'Mary Poppins' had anything to do with children, and I have always assumed, when I thought about it at all, that she had come out of the same wall of nothingness...”

“I think that 'Mary Poppins' needs a subtle reader, in many respects, to grasp all its implications, and I understand that these cannot be translated in terms of the film.”

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

“I cannot summon up inspiration; I myself am summoned.”