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P. L. Travers

Pamela Lyndon Travers (August 9 1899 – April 23 1996) was a British author, born Helen Lyndon Goff in Maryborough, Queensland, Australia, best known as the creator of the "Mary Poppins" series of stories.
 * See also
 * Mary Poppins (1964 film)

Quotes

 * Mary Poppins is both a joy and a curse to me as a writer ... As a writer, you can feel awfully imprisoned, because people, having had so much of one thing, want you always to go on doing more of the same.
 * Quoted in Current Biography Yearbook 1996, p. 580.

 * 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.
 * From "Personal View," by P. L. Travers, in The Sunday Times (London), issue 8575 (11 December 1988).

 * 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.
 * From "I Never Wrote for Children," by P. L. Travers, in The New York Times Magazine (2 July 1978).

 * The silky hush of intimate things, fragrant with my fragrance, steal softly down, so loth to rob me of my last dear concealment.
 * From a poem (c. 1920) in the Australian publication The Triad, as quoted in Out of the Sky She Came: The Life of P.L. Travers, Creator of Mary Poppins (1999) by Valerie Lawson, ISBN 0733610722 [U.S. and U.K. title: Mary Poppins, She Wrote : The Life of P. L. Travers (2006) ISBN 0743298160 ]

 * It is clear from Gurdjieff's writings that hypnotism, mesmerism and various arcane methods of expanding consciousness must have played a large part in the studies of the Seekers of Truth. None of these processes, however, is to be thought of as having any bearing on what is called Black Magic, which, according to Gurdjieff, "has always one definite characteristic. It is the tendency to use people for some, even the best of aims, without their knowledge and understanding, either by producing in them faith and infatuation or by acting upon them through fear. There is, in fact, neither red, green nor yellow magic. There is "doing." Only "doing" is magic." Properly to realise the scale of what Gurdjieff meant by magic, one has to remember his continually repeated aphorism, "Only he who can be can do," and its corollary that, lacking this fundamental verb, nothing is "done," things simply "happen."
 * "Gurdjieff" in Man, Myth and Magic : Encyclopedia of the Supernatural (1970)

 * 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.
 * The World of the Hero (1976)

 * A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.
 * As quoted in The New York Times (2 July 1978)

 * 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."
 * Interview by Edwina Burness and Jerry Griswold, The Paris Review No. 86 (Winter 1982)

So, I let out the air, in a manner of speaking, dwindled to my appropriate size, and gave myself over to that process which, for lack of a more erudite term, I have coined the phrase “Thinking is linking.” I thought of Kerenyi — “Mythology occupies a higher position in the bios, the Existence, of a people in which it is still alive than poetry, storytelling or any other art.” And of Malinowski — “Myth is not merely a story told, but a reality lived.” And, along with those, the word “Pollen,” the most pervasive substance in the world, kept knocking at my ear. Or rather, not knocking, but humming. What hums? What buzzes? What travels the world? Suddenly I found what I sought. “What the bee knows,” I told myself. “That is what I’m after.” But even as I patted my back, I found myself cursing, and not for the first time, the artful trickiness of words, their capriciousness, their lack of conscience. Betray them and they will betray you. Be true to them and, without compunction, they will also betray you, foxily turning all the tables, thumbing syntactical noses. For — note bene! — if you speak or write about What The Bee Knows, what the listener, or the reader, will get — indeed, cannot help but get — is Myth, Symbol, and Tradition! You see the paradox? The words, by their very perfidy — which is also their honorable intention — have brought us to where we need to be. For, to stand in the presence of paradox, to be spiked on the horns of dilemma, between what is small and what is great, microcosm and macrocosm, or, if you like, the two ends of the stick, is the only posture we can assume in front of this ancient knowledge — one could even say everlasting knowledge.
 * “Myth, Symbol, and Tradition” was the phrase I originally wrote at the top of the page, for editors like large, cloudy titles. Then I looked at what I had written and, wordlessly, the words reproached me. I hope I had the grace to blush at my own presumption and their portentousness. How could I, if I lived for a thousand years, attempt to cover more than a hectare of that enormous landscape?
 * "What the Bee Knows" in Parabola : The Magazine of Myth and Tradition, Vol. VI, No. 1 (February 1981); later published in What the Bee Knows : Reflections on Myth, Symbol, and Story (1989)

 * The Sphinx, the Pyramids, the stone temples are, all of them, ultimately, as flimsy as London Bridge; our cities but tents set up in the cosmos. We pass. But what the bee knows, the wisdom that sustains our passing life — however much we deny or ignore it — that for ever remains.
 * What the Bee Knows : Reflections on Myth, Symbol, and Story (1989)

 * 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.
 * As quoted in No Word for Time: The Way of the Algonquin People (2001) by Evan T. Pritchard

 * 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.
 * As quoted in Sticks and Stones : The Troublesome Success of Children's Literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter (2002) by Jack Zipes

 * You can ask me anything you like about my work, but I'll never talk about myself.
 * As quoted by Valerie Lawson, in an interview: "The Mystic Life of P.L. Travers" (7 May 2003)

 * 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.
 * Quoted in "Hail, Mary!" in The Independent (19 September 2004) by Mark Bostridge

Mary Poppins (1934)

 * ISBN 0152017178

 * If you want to find Cherry-Tree Lane all you have to do is ask the Policeman at the cross-roads. He will push his helmet slightly to one side, scratch his head thoughtfully, and then he will point his huge white-gloved finger and say: "First to your right, second to your left, sharp right again, and you're there. Good-morning." And sure enough, if you follow his directions exactly, you will be there — right in the middle of Cherry-Tree Lane, where the houses run down one side and the Park runs down the other and the cherry-trees go dancing right down the middle. If you are looking for Number Seventeen — and it is more than likely that you will be, for this book is all about that particular house — you will very soon find it.
 * Ch. 1 "East-Wind" (opening lines)

 * Jane and Michael sat at the window watching for Mr. Banks to come home, and listening to the sound of the East Wind blowing through the naked branches of the cherry-trees in the Lane. The trees themselves, turning and bending in the half light, looked as though they had gone mad and were dancing their roots out of the ground. "There he is!" said Michael, pointing suddenly to a shape that banged heavily against the gate. Jane peered through the gathering darkness. "That's not Daddy," she said. "It's somebody else." Then the shape, tossed and bent under the wind, lifted the latch of the gate, and they could see that it belonged to a woman, who was holding her hat on with one hand and carrying a bag in the other. As they watched, Jane and Michael saw a curious thing happen. As soon as the shape was inside the gate the wind seemed to catch her up into the air and fling her at the house. It was as though it had flung her first at the gate, waited for her to open it, and then had lifted and thrown her, bag and all, at the front door. The watching children heard a terrific bang, and as she landed the whole house shook. "How funny! I've never seen that happen before," said Michael.
 * Ch. 1 "East-Wind"

 * Presently they saw their Mother coming out of the drawing-room with a visitor following her. Jane and Michael could see that the newcomer had shiny black hair — "Rather like a wooden Dutch doll," whispered Jane. And that she was thin, with large feet and hands, and small, rather peering blue-eyes. "You'll find that they are very nice children," Mrs. Banks was saying. Michael's elbow gave a sharp dig at Jane's ribs. "And that they give no trouble at all," continued Mrs. Banks uncertainly, as if she herself didn't really believe what she was saying. They heard the visitor sniff as though she didn't either. "Now, about reference —" Mrs. Banks went on. "Oh, I make it a rule never to give references," said the other firmly.
 * Ch. 1 "East-Wind"

 * Mrs. Banks did not notice what was happening behind her, but Jane and Michael, watching from the top landing, had an excellent view of the extraordinary thing the visitor now did. Certainly she followed Mrs. Banks upstairs, but not in the usual way. With her large bag in her hands she slid gracefully up the banisters, and arrived at the landing at the same time as Mrs. Banks. Such a thing, Jane and Michael knew, had never been done before. Down, of course, for they had often done it themselves. But up — never! They gazed curiously at the strange new visitor.
 * Ch. 1 "East-Wind"

 * I always thought dancing improper; but it can't be since I myself am dancing.
 * The Red Cow in Ch. 5 "The Dancing Cow"

 * What I want to know is this: Are the stars gold paper or is the gold paper stars?
 * Jane in Ch. 8 "Mrs. Corry"

 * Tonight the small are free from the great and the great protect the small.
 * Hamadryad, the King Cobra in Ch. 10 "Full-Moon"

 * 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.
 * Hamadryad, the King Cobra in Ch. 10 "Full-Moon"

 * "Bird and beast and stone and star — we are all one, all one —" murmured the Hamadryad, softly folding his hood about him as he himself swayed between the children. "Child and serpent, star and stone — all one."
 * Ch. 10 "Full-Moon"

Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1943)

 * ISBN 0152058222

The Original Guy Fawkes was one of the men who took part in the Gunpowder Plot. This was a conspiracy for blowing up King James I and the Houses of Parliament on November 5th, 1605. The plot was discovered, however, before any damage was done. The only result was that King James and his Parliament went on living but Guy Fawkes, poor man, did not. He was executed with the other conspirators. '''Nevertheless, it is Guy Fawkes who is remembered today and King James who is forgotten. For since that time, the Fifth of November in England, like the Fourth of July in America, has been devoted to Fireworks.''' From 1605 till 1939 every village green in the shires had a bonfire on Guy Fawkes' Day.
 * The Fifth of November is Guy Fawkes' Day in England. In peacetime it is celebrated with bonfires on the greens, fireworks in the parks and the carrying of "guys" through the streets. "Guys" are stuffed, straw figures of unpopular persons; and after they have been shown to everybody they are burnt in the bonfires amid great acclamation. The children black their faces and put on comical clothes, and go about begging for a Penny for the Guy. Only the very meanest people refuse to give pennies and these are always visited by Extreme Bad Luck.
 * NOTE (on Guy Fawkes' Day)

 * 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.
 * NOTE

 * Since 1939, however, there have been no bonfires on the village greens. No fireworks gleam in the blackened parks and the streets are dark and silent. But this darkness will not last forever. There will some day come a Fifth of November — or another date, it doesn't matter — when fires will burn in a chain of brightness from Land's End to John O' Groats. The children will dance and leap about them as they did in the times before. They will take each other by the hand and watch the rockets breaking, and afterwards they will go home singing to the houses full of light...
 * NOTE (on Guy Fawkes' Day, during World War II)

 * Mary Poppins herself had flown away, but the gifts she had brought would remain for always..
 * Ch. 8 "The Other Door"

 * We'll never forget you, Mary Poppins!
 * Ch. 8 "The Other Door"

The Paris Review interview (1982)

 * Interviewed by Edwina Burness and Jerry Griswold, in "P. L. Travers, The Art of Fiction No. 63" in The Paris Review No. 86 (Winter 1982)

I’ve spent years thinking about it because the questions I’ve been asked, very perceptive questions by readers, have led me to examine what I wrote.''' The book was entirely spontaneous and not invented, not thought out. I never said, “Well, I’ll write a story about Mother Goddess and call it Mary Poppins.” It didn’t happen like that. I cannot summon up inspiration; I myself am summoned.''' Once, when I was in the United States, I went to see a psychologist. It was during the war when I was feeling very cut off. I thought, Well, these people in psychology always want to see the kinds of things you’ve done, so I took as many of my books as were then written. I went and met the man, and he gave me another appointment. And at the next appointment the books were handed back to me with the words: "You know, you don’t really need me. All you need to do is read your own books." That was so interesting to me. I began to see, thinking about it, that people who write spontaneously as I do, not with invention, never really read their own books to learn from them. And I set myself to reading them. Every now and then I found myself saying, "But this is true. How did she know?" '''And then I realized that she is me. Now I can say much more about Mary Poppins because what was known to me in my blood and instincts has now come up to the surface in my head.'''
 * I’ve always been interested in the Mother Goddess. Not long ago, a young person, whom I don’t know very well, sent a message to a mutual friend that said: “I’m an addict of Mary Poppins, and I want you to ask P. L. Travers if Mary Poppins is not really the Mother Goddess.” So, I sent back a message: “Well, I’ve only recently come to see that. She is either the Mother Goddess or one of her creatures — that is, if we’re going to look for mythological or fairy-tale origins of Mary Poppins.”

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

 * I think if she comes from anywhere that has a name, it is out of myth. And myth has been my study and joy ever since — oh, the age, I would think . . . of three. I’ve studied it all my life. No culture can satisfactorily move along its forward course without its myths, which are its teachings, its fundamental dealing with the truth of things, and the one reality that underlies everything.

 * She doesn’t hold back anything from them. When they beg her not to depart, she reminds them that nothing lasts forever. She’s as truthful as the nursery rhymes. Remember that all the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty-Dumpty together again. There’s such a tremendous truth in that. It goes into children in some part of them that they don’t know, and indeed perhaps we don’t know. But eventually they realize — and that’s the great truth.

I love Friend Monkey. I love the story of Hanuman. For many years, it remained in my very blood because he’s someone who loves too much and can’t help it. I don’t know where I first heard of him, but the story remained with me and I knew it would come out of me somehow or other. But I didn’t know what shape it would take.
 * 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.”
 * Friend Monkey is really my favorite of all my books because the Hindu myth on which it is based is my favorite — the myth of the Monkey Lord who loved so much that he created chaos wherever he went. … when you read the Ramayana you’ll come across the story of Hanuman on which I built my version of that very old myth.

If you look at other so-called children’s authors, you’ll see they never wrote directly for children. Though Lewis Carroll dedicated his book to Alice, I feel it was an afterthought once the whole was already committed to paper. Beatrix Potter declared, “I write to please myself!” And I think the same can be said of Milne or Tolkien or Laura Ingalls Wilder. I certainly had no specific child in mind when I wrote Mary Poppins. How could I? If I were writing for the Japanese child who reads it in a land without staircases, how could I have written of a nanny who slides up the banister? If I were writing for the African child who reads the book in Swahili, how could I have written of umbrellas for a child who has never seen or used one? But I suppose if there is something in my books that appeals to children, it is the result of my not having to go back to my childhood; I can, as it were, turn aside and consult it (James Joyce once wrote, “My childhood bends beside me”). '''If we’re completely honest, not sentimental or nostalgic, we have no idea where childhood ends and maturity begins. It is one unending thread, not a life chopped up into sections out of touch with one another.''' Once, when Maurice Sendak was being interviewed on television a little after the success of Where the Wild Things Are, he was asked the usual questions: Do you have children? Do you like children? After a pause, he said with simple dignity: “I was a child.” That says it all.
 *  I never wrote my books especially for children. … When I sat down to write Mary Poppins or any of the other books, I did not know children would read them. I’m sure there must be a field of “children’s literature” — I hear about it so often — but sometimes I wonder if it isn’t a label created by publishers and booksellers who also have the impossible presumption to put on books such notes as “from five to seven” or “from nine to twelve.” How can they know when a book will appeal to such and such an age?

 * 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.

 * I read myths and fairy tales and books about them a great deal now, but I very seldom read novels. I find modern novels bore me. I can read Tolstoy and the Russians, but mostly I read comparative mythology and comparative religion. I need matter to carry with me.

 * When I write it’s more a process of listening. I don’t pretend that there is some spirit standing beside me that tells me things. More and more I’ve become convinced that the great treasure to possess is the unknown. I’m going to write, I hope, a lot about that. It’s with my unknowing that I come to the myths. If I came to them knowing, I would have nothing to learn. But I bring my unknowing, which is a tangible thing, a clear space, something that’s been made room for out of the muddle of ordinary psychic stuff, an empty space.

I’ve always loved the idea of the craftsman, the anonymous man. For instance, I’ve always wanted my books to be called the work of Anon, because Anon is my favorite literary character.''' If you look through an anthology of poems that go from the far past into the present time, you’ll see that all the poems signed “Anon” have a very specific flavor that is one flavor all the way through the centuries. 'I think, perhaps arrogantly, of myself as “Anon.” I would like to think that Mary Poppins'' and the other books could be called back to make that change. But I suppose it’s too late for that.'''
 * You know C. S. Lewis, whom I greatly admire, said there’s no such thing as creative writing. I’ve always agreed with that and always refuse to teach it when given the opportunity. He said there is, in fact, only one Creator and we mix. That’s our function, to mix the elements He has given us. See how wonderfully anonymous that leaves us? You can’t say, “I did this; this gross matrix of flesh and blood and sinews and nerves did this.” '''What nonsense! I’m given these things to make a pattern out of. Something gave it to me.

Myth, Symbol, and Meaning in Mary Poppins (2007)

 * Quotes of Travers from Myth, Symbol, and Meaning in Mary Poppins: The Governess as Provocateur (2007) by Giorgia Grilli

 * These men — Yeats, James Stephens, and the rest — had aristocratic minds. For them, the world was not fragmented. An idea did not suddenly grow … all alone and separate. For them, all things had long family trees. They saw nothing shameful or silly in myths and fairy stories, nor did they shovel them out of sight and some cupboard marked "Only For Children." They were always willing to concede that there was more things in heaven and earth than philosophy dreamed of. They allowed for the unknown. And, as you can imagine, I took great heart from this. It was Æ who showed me how to look and learn from one's own writing. "Popkins" he said once — he always called her just plain Popkins, whether deliberately mistaking the name or not I never knew. His humor was always subtle — "Popkins had she lived in another age, in the old times to which she certainly belongs, she would undoubtedly have had long golden tresses, a wreath of flowers in one hand, and perhaps a spear in the other. Her eyes would have been like the sea, her nose comely, and on her feet winged sandals. But, this age being the Kali Yuga, as the Indus call it — in our terms, the Iron Age — she comes in habiliments suited to it."
 * Ch. 2, p. 38

 * 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.
 * Ch. 2, p. 39

Quotes about Travers

 * Mary Poppins arrives with the wind, and intervenes in the lives of ordinary humans, making magic, but never admitting that it has taken place. She understands the language of animals and birds, and between her visits to mortals returns to some secret source. Although the Poppins books have much in common with other works of children's literature — all the way back to the early 19th century and ETA Hoffmann's inspiration of making toys come alive — Travers was adamant that she didn't write specifically for children, and that there was no such thing as children's books. Poppins, she said, "had come up of the same well of nothingness as the poetry, myths and legends that had absorbed me all my writing life." This was something else that connected Travers to Disney, who maintained that his films were not directed at children, but at the innocence within us all.
 * in "Hail, Mary!" in The Independent (19 September 2004)

 * Throughout their children's novels, Lewis and Travers bring together heterogeneous collections of characters from all orders of being — humanity, mythology (Greek, Norse, Christian), the animal world (both talking and nontalking beasts), and other fictional sources (for example, nursery rhyme and fairytale figures) — and have them mingle in festival-like gatherings reminiscent of medieval carnival celebrations. ... the interaction among these disparate characters often results in the suspension of hierarchical barriers...
 * Catherine L. Elick in "Animal carnivals: a Bakhtinian reading of C. S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew and P. L. Travers's Mary Poppins" in Style Vol. 35, No. 3 (Fall 2001)

 * Mary Poppins advocates the kind of family life that Walt Disney had spent his career both chronicling and helping to foster on a national level: father at work, mother at home, children flourishing. It is tempting to imagine that in Travers he found a like-minded person, someone who embodied the virtues of conformity and traditionalism. Nothing could be further from the truth. Travers was a woman who never married, wore trousers when she felt like it, had a transformative and emotionally charged relationship with an older married man, and entered into a long-term live-in relationship with another woman. As she approached forty, she decided that she wanted a child. After a bizarre incident in which she attempted to adopt the seventeen-year-old girl who cleaned her house, she travelled to Ireland and adopted an infant, one of a pair of twins, and raised him as a single mother Her reverence for the delights of family life was perhaps as intense as Disney's, but her opinion about the shape such a life might assume was far more nuanced. Children's authors are not known for their happy childhoods, and Helen Goff — the little girl who at twenty-one changed her name to Pamela Travers and never looked back — endured one that was almost archetypal in its sadness and its privations. She was born in Australia in 1899, the eldest daughter in a household of girls. Her father, Travers Goff, was a bank manager and a drinker, and he died when she was seven.... Her mother, Margaret, who was pretty and feckless, soldiered on for a few years, and then, when Helen was ten, she did what a mother is never supposed to do. She gave up. One night, in the middle of a thunderstorm, Margaret left Helen in charge of the two younger children, telling her that she was going to drown herself in a nearby creek. As an old woman, Travers wrote about the terrifying experience: "Large-eyed, the little ones looked at me — she and I called them the little ones, both of us aware that an eldest child, no matter how young, can never experience the heart's ease that little ones enjoy." Helen stirred the fire and then they all lay down on the hearth rug and she told them a story about a magical flying horse, with the small ones asking excited questions ("Could he carry us to the shiny land, all three on his back?"). As she tried to distract her siblings, she worried about the future. ... Margaret came back that night, having been unsuccessful in her suicide attempt, but Helen's mind was made up. She no longer cleaved to her unreliable, dithering mother but, rather, to a formidable maiden great-aunt, Helen Morehead. Aunt Ellie, as she was called, bossed everyone around, but her fierceness disguised a kindness she would have been embarrassed to admit. ... Obviously, Travers did not write her books to commemorate a happy childhood, but she did seem interested in rewriting her bad one. The Banks family is a reformed version of the Goffs, their charming features magnified and their failures burnished away. Father is a banker, although not a drunk; mother is a flibbertigibbet, although not a suicidal one. And Mary Poppins, like Aunt Ellie, is the great deflater, the enemy of any attempt at whimsy or sentiment.
 * in "Becoming Mary Poppins : P. L. Travers, Walt Disney, and the making of a myth" in The New Yorker (19 December 2005)

 * Travers's was a natural phenomena, ancient as mountain ranges, on first-name terms with the primal powers of the universe, adored and respected by everything that saw the world as it was. And she was a mystery. … philosophically, I suspect now, the universe of Mary Poppins underpins all my writing …
 * Neil Gaiman, in his Foreword to Myth, Symbol, and Meaning in Mary Poppins: The Governess as Provocateur (2007) by Giorgia Grilli, p. xiii

The Travers given us in  is a one-trick pony. Emma Thompson does a wonderful job in presenting a character who is peremptory, stiff, unkind, and unfriendly. On a plane trip across the Atlantic, she loudly objects to spending eleven hours in the company of a fussing baby. She complains about California’s endless sunshine. She is rude to Disney’s staff. She demands that tea be prepared properly. She is, in short, the Curmudgeon and over the course of the movie it will be the task of Walt and Co. to loosen up this English harridan with America’s folksy friendliness and, darn it, melt the Curmudgeon’s heart! '''Call Emma Thompson’s character anybody else, and I have no problem. But associate her with P.L. Travers — a generous and kind woman, albeit with the no-nonsense manner of a Zen master — and I have to cry foul.''' Travers, herself, was the most impressive woman I ever met. In her youth, she was part of the Celtic Twilight and good friends with William Butler Yeats and George Russell, the Irish poet and mystic known as “AE.” She lived with the Navahos during World War II. She was part of Gurdjieff’s inner circle, and she was the second Western woman to go to Japan to study Zen. She was wise and, when I knew her in New York, she was a teacher who took on students interested in the spiritual life. In a similar way, her book ' is profound — though let me tell you from experience, it’s hard to persuade people to sample it because of the Disney movie, even though the two are as different as Jesus Christ Superstar and its source.' Travers’ other writings are equally impressive, especially her novel Friend Monkey''. A good introduction to her and her mythological way of thinking is What the Bee Knows, a collection of her essays that does Joseph Campbell one better and treats the path of women’s lives as seen in fairy tales, the deep meanings of “,” the sacredness of names in aboriginal cultures, and new ways of understanding the story of the Prodigal Son. Saving Mr. Banks, then, is off the mark in two major ways. The first is the suggestion that Travers was little else than a difficult person and hard to please, but she finally came around and liked the Disney film. That's just untrue. The film’s other misdirection comes in a series of flashbacks to Travers’ childhood in the outback of Australia and glimpses of her father Travers Goff (played by Colin Farrell) who drank himself to death. In a bit of penny-ante Freud, the great secret behind Mary Poppins, we’re told, was Travers’ troubled relationship with her father. As Mary Poppins herself might say, “Stuff and nonsense!”
 * Since the dead can’t set the record straight, I hope you will excuse me for feeling a duty to honor Travers and her fierce honesty.
 * Jerry Griswold, in "“Saving Mr. Banks” But Throwing P.L. Travers Under the Bus" (December 17, 2013)

 * On September 6, 1995 La Stampa, Turin's daily newspaper, titled at full page "Is Mary Poppins really Satan?". Many readers were, understandably, surprised but no reader was more astonished than the undersigned. In fact I learned from the article that I had accused Mary Poppins to have "clear links with the esoteric and satanic thought". I was credited for having discovered that "under the gentle mask of the extraordinary nanny a dangerous creature was hidden, with features no less than satanic". The same journalist, appropriately, interviewed an exorcist who complained that "Introvigne normally minimizes the presence of Satan in our life" (a reference to my book on Satanism, where I argue that the number of real Satanists is minimum compared to the number of those who promote Satanism scares). But this, for the exorcist, amounted to still more convincing evidence that Mary Poppins was really satanic: "If someone like Massimo Introvigne has written such a thing, this could only mean that the danger is really there". The problem was, however, that I had never written such a thing.
 * Massimo Introvigne in "Mary Poppins Goes to Hell. Pamela Travers, Gurdjieff, and the Rhetoric of Fundamentalism" (1996)

 * In an interview which appeared in The Paris Review in 1982 the interviewers asked Travers whether "Mary Poppins' teaching — if one can call it that — resemble that of Christ in his parables". Travers replied: "My 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, 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". The answer is clarified by the following question: "So people can read anything and everything into the stories?" "Indeed."
 * Massimo Introvigne in "Mary Poppins Goes to Hell. Pamela Travers, Gurdjieff, and the Rhetoric of Fundamentalism" (1996)

 * Mary Poppins seems the epitome of the punishing governess, the bullying woman who has an apt saying for every occasion, and who subdues children as they were subdued in the Victorian age, when they were seen and not heard. ... She carefully hides her compassion. Almost sadistic at times, Mary is never really nasty but often very sharp. She is a controlling force, making order from disorder, making magic, and then never admitting magic took place. ... Mary Poppins threatens to leave at a point of time which only she controls. She tells her charges she will be with them until the wind changes or until her necklace breaks. She never tells them where she has come from, where she intends to go or who she really is. But she leaves many clues. Like Francis of Assisi, she is close to animals and birds, with whom she can talk. Like Jesus she helps the poor and weak. She understands the universe and seems to take part in its creation and renewal. She is known as the Great Expectation, the Oddity, the Misfit.
 * Valerie Lawson, in Out of the Sky She Came: The Life of P.L. Travers, Creator of Mary Poppins (1999) by Valerie Lawson, ISBN 0733610722 [U.S. and U.K. title: Mary Poppins, She Wrote : The Life of P. L. Travers (2006) ISBN 0743298160 ]

 * She felt very much alone. She did not make friends very easily, but I don't want to make out that she was always miserable. When she was in middle age, she was quite a charming and lively person, because the actress in her would come out. She'd been an actor, as I said earlier on. It wasn't until she became a guru herself after Gurdjieff died, that she became a rather self-important, morose kind of Pamela.
 * Valerie Lawson, in an ABC radio interview: "The Mystic Life of P.L. Travers" (7 May 2003)

 * Pamela Travers appears and disappears as magically as the nanny she created. The New Yorker is the latest to discover the real Travers, the Australian who invented Mary Poppins 70 years ago. Travers told me in 1995, a year before her death, that she would talk of her work, but never of herself. In her lifetime, a biography was impossible, partly because she left so many false trails. Luckily, she also left a paper trail of truth at her London home and in a Sydney library.
 * Valerie Lawson, in a letter to The New Yorker (5 January 2006)

 * I actually believe she liked the film a lot more than she let on publicly ... You have to remember that she was, above all, a great storyteller. And in the long line of storytellers who have faith in an oral tradition, who believe that for a great book or books to survive, they have to be retold or reinvented for each generation
 * in "Hail, Mary!" in The Independent (19 September 2004)

title: P. L. Travers


text:
Mary Poppins (film)

Mary Poppins is a 1964 American musical live-action/animated film about a magical nanny, played by Julie Andrews, who comes to work for a cold banker's unhappy family.
 * Directed by Robert Stevenson. Written by Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi, based on the novel by P. L. Travers.

It's supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

Mary Poppins

 * As I expected. "Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way."
 * Reading her magical tape measure, after the children ask her to measure herself.
 * In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and snap! [snaps her fingers] The job's a game.
 * Close your mouth please, Michael, we are not a codfish.
 * Sacked?! Certainly not, I am never sacked.

George Banks

 * It's grand to be an Englishman in 1910 's on the throne; it's the age of men.
 * It's 6:03 and the heirs to my dominion are scrubbed and tubbed, and adequately fed. And so I'll pat them on the head, and send them off to bed. Ah, lordly is the life I lead.
 * A man has dreams of walking with giants To carve his niche in the edifice of time Before the mortar of his zeal Has a chance to congeal The cup is dashed from his lips The flame is snuffed a-borning He's brought to wrack and ruin in his prime.
 * A British bank is run with precision A British home requires nothing less Tradition, discipline and rules Must be the tools Without them: disorder, catastrophe, anarchy In short, you have a mess!
 * Kindly do not attempt to cloud the issue with facts.
 * [shakes Winifred's hands] You know, Winifred, I think she will. [Laughs] I think she will!

Winifred Banks

 * Oh, George, you didn't jump into the river. How sensible of you!
 * [sings] Our daughters' daughters will adore us and they'll sing in grateful chorus, "Well done, sister ."
 * [sings] Though we adore men individually, we agree that as a group they're rather stupid.

Bert

 * Oh, it's you! Hello! … Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane, you say? Alright. … Come on with me.…
 * Here we are, 17 Cherry Tree Lane. Home of George Banks, Esq. [hears yelling inside] Hello, hello, hello. Admiral's right, heavy weather brewing at and no mistake.
 * Opening comments to viewers of the film, breaking the .
 * Winds from the east... Mist comin' in... Like something's a brewin', about to begin... Can't put me finger on what lies in store... But I feel what's to 'appen, all 'appened before...!
 * Not, I suppose. Still, a bit of a finger in the eye, ain't they?
 * Comment about his chalk drawings
 * What did I tell ya? There's the whole world at your feet. And who gets to see it? But the birds, the stars, and the chimney sweeps.
 * [Surprised] What? No road?!
 * [Laughs while taking a tissue from his pocket] It's just good clean soot, Michael.
 * Goodbye, Mary Poppins, don't stay away too long.
 * Closing line of film

Others

 * Admiral Boom: [observes the long queue of want-to-be nannies] Ghastly looking crew, I must say!
 * Mr. Dawes, Sr.: While stand the banks of England, England stands — whoa, whoa...! [Mr. Dawes stumbles over his own cane] When fall the banks of England... ENGLAND FALLS! [Mr. Dawes falls backward and the rest of the Board of Directors have to catch him]
 * Uncle Albert: The other day, when it was so cold, a friend of mine went to buy some long underwear. The shopkeeper said to him, "How long you want it?" And my friend said, "Well, from about September to March."
 * Old Crone: Come with me, my dears. Granny'll hide you!

Dialogue

 * Admiral Boom: Time Gun ready?
 * Mr. Binnacle: Ready and charged, Sir.
 * Admiral Boom: Three minutes and six seconds.
 * Mr. Binnacle: Aye, aye, sir.
 * Bert: [to the audience] What he's famous for is punctuality [touches his nose as he says this]. The whole world takes its time from Greenwich. But Greenwich they say, takes its time from Admiral Boom. [calling up to the admiral] What cheer, Admiral?
 * Admiral Boom: Good afternoon to you, young man. Where are you bound?
 * Bert: Number 17. Got some parties who want to see it.
 * Admiral Boom: Enter that in the log.
 * Mr. Binnacle: Aye, aye, sir.
 * Admiral Boom: A word of advice, young man. Storm signals are up at number 17. Bit of heavy weather brewing there.
 * Bert: Thank you sir! Keep an eye skinned.

 * Winifred Banks: Well, there're missing. Katie Nanna has looking everywhere.
 * George Banks: Very well. I'll deal with this at once.

( phone circle rings )

 * George: Give me the police station, quickly, please.
 * Winifred: I don't think, we need the police, dear. The facts of the matter--

( doorbell rings  )

 * George: Come in, Constable. Come in.

 * Constable Jones: Thank you, sir.

 * George: Valuables?

 * Constable: Come along, now. Come along.

 * Winifred: Jane! Michael!
 * George: Winifred, please. Don't be emotional.
 * Constable: Oh, I wouldn't be too hard on them, sir. They've had a long, weary walk today.
 * George: Children, come here at once. Well?

 * Jane Banks: I'm sorry, we lost Katie Nanna, Father.
 * Michael Banks: You see, it was windy.
 * Jane: And, the kite was too strong for us.

 * Jane: Thank you, Constable.

 * George: I would indeed! Ellen, take Jane and Michael upstairs straightaway.

 * Ellen: Yes, sir.

 * George: Thank you. Most interesting. And now, I think we've had quite enough of this nonsense. Please return to the nursery.

 * Winifred: They we're only trying to help. They're just childen.
 * Geroge: I'm well they're just children, Winifred. I only congratulate myself that I decided to step in and take a hand. ( paper rips ) "Play games, sing songs, give treats." Ridiculous. There's no question in my mind whatsover. Now, is the time for action.

( phone circle rings )

 * George: Give me The Times, please. No, I do not know the number.
 * Winifred: Oh, George, you're alaways so forceful.
 * George: The Times? George Banks here. 17 Cherry Tree Line. I wish to place an advertisement in your column.

 * [George and Winifred are talking about the failure of their previous nanny]
 * Winifred: I'm sorry, dear, but when I chose Katie Nana, I thought she would be firm with the children. She seemed so solemn and cross.
 * George: My dear, never confuse efficiency with a liver complaint.

 * Jane: [reads an ad she and Michael wrote] Wanted: a nanny for two adorable children.
 * George: Adorable — well that's highly debatable, I must say.
 * [Jane continues reading while singing alone.]
 * Jane: If you want this choice position, have a cheery disposition...
 * George: Jane, I don't... [Winifred silences him.]
 * Jane: Rosy cheeks, no ...
 * Michael: That's the part I put in!
 * Jane: Play games all sorts. You must be kind, you must be witty; very sweet and fairly pretty...
 * George: Well, of all the ridic... [Winifred silences him again.]
 * Jane: Take us on outings, give us treats. Sing songs, bring sweets. Never be cross or cruel, never feed us castor oil, or . Love us as a son and daughter, and never smell of barley water...
 * Michael: I put that in, too.
 * Jane: If you won't scold and dominate us, we will never give you cause to hate us. We won't hide your spectacles so you can't see, put toads in your bed, or pepper in your tea. Hurry, Nanny! Many thanks! Sincerely...
 * Michael and Jane: Jane and Michael Banks.

 * [Having seen Mary Poppins's first arrival as she's floating down from the sky.]
 * Michael: Perhaps it's a.
 * Jane: Of course not. Witches have.

 * [As George puts his head down in the fireplace, to look for his children's ad, which he ripped up, and is now mended in Mary Poppins' hand.]
 * Mary Poppins: I beg your pardon, are you ill?
 * George: I hope not.

 * Jane & Michael: Please, Mary Poppins, please?
 * Mary Poppins: I have no intention of making a spectacle of myself, thank you.
 * Bert: I'll do it myself.
 * Mary Poppins: Do what?
 * Bert: A bit of magic.
 * Michael: A bit of magic?
 * Bert: It's easy. You think. You wink. You do a double blink. You close your eyes... And jump.
 * [Nothing happens]
 * Jane: Is something supposed to happen?
 * Mary Poppins: Bert, what utter nonsense. [sighs] Why do you always complicate things that are really quite simple? Give me your hand please, Michael. Don't slouch. One, two...
 * [They jump into the sidewalk drawing. Afterwards, they find that their clothes have magically transformed.]
 * Bert: Mary Poppins, you look beeeeautiful.
 * Mary Poppins: Do you really think so?
 * Bert: I cross my heart you do, like the day I met ya.
 * Mary Poppins: You look fine too, Bert.

 * Bert: [sings] It's true that Mavis and Sybil have ways that are winning And Prudence and Gwendolyn set your heart spinning Phoebe's delightful, Maude is disarming.
 * Penguins: Janice, Felicia, and Lydia.
 * Bert: [sings] Charming! Cynthia's dashing Vivian's sweet Stephanie's smashing Priscilla a treat.
 * Penguins: Veronica, Millicent, Agnes, and Jane.
 * Bert: [sings] Convivial company, time and again Dorcas and Phyllis and Glynis are sorts I'll agree are three jolly good sports But cream of the crop, tip of the top....
 * Bert and the Penguins: It's Mary Poppins, and there we stop!

 * Horseman: View halloo!
 * Horse: Oh, yes, definitely. A view halloo.
 * Fox: View halloo?! [The horseman blows a trumpet, causing his dogs to go charge at the Fox.] Faith and begora, it's them again!

 * Gentleman: There probably aren't words to describe your emotions.
 * Mary Poppins: On the contrary, there's a very good word. Am I right, Bert?
 * Bert: Tell 'em what is it.
 * Mary Poppins: Right. [sings] Iiiiit's Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

 * Mary Poppins: You know, you can say it backwards, which is, but that's going a bit too far, don't you think?
 * Bert: Indubitably.
 * Mary Poppins: [sings] So if the cat has got your tongue, there's no need for dismay...
 * Bert: Here, here!
 * Mary Poppins: [sings] Just summon up this word and then you've got a lot to say  But better use it carefully or it could change your life...
 * Busker: For example...
 * Mary Poppins: Yes?
 * Busker: One night I said it to me girl, and now me girl's me wife. [Wife hits him with ] Ow! And a lovely thing she is, too. [laughs]

 * Winifred: As a matter of fact, since you hired Mary Poppins, the most extraordinary things seem to have come over the household.
 * George: Is that so?
 * Winifred: Take Ellen for instance. She hasn't broken a dish all morning.
 * George: [uninterested] Really. Well, that is extraordinary.

 * George: Ellen, stop making that offensive noise. And shut the window. That bird is giving me a headache.
 * Ellen: Yes, sir! [to the bird] Quiet! You're giving the master an 'eadache!
 * [The bird chirps one last time and Ellen shuts the window.]

 * Jane: Good morning, father!
 * George: Morning.
 * Jane: Mary Poppins taught us the most wonderful word...
 * Michael: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
 * George: What on Earth are you talking about? Superca — Super — or whatever the infernal thing is.
 * Jane: It's something to say when you don't know what to say.
 * George: Yes, well, I always know what to say. Go on. Hurry along, please.
 * Jane: Yes, father.

 * George: Have this piano repaired. When I sit down to an instrument, I like to have it in tune.
 * Winifred: But George, you don't play.
 * George: Madame, that is entirely beside the point!

 * Bert: Speaking of sight, it reminds me of me brother. He's got a nice cushy job in a watch factory.
 * Uncle Albert: In a watch factory? What does he do?
 * Bert: [laughs] He stands about all day and makes faces!
 * Uncle Albert: [laughs] He makes faces in a watch factory!

 * Bert: Speaking of names, I know a man with a wooden leg named Smith.
 * Uncle Albert: What's the name of his other leg?
 * Everyone: [laughs]

 * Bert: Uncle Albert, I got a jolly joke I save for just such an occasion. Would you like to hear it?
 * Uncle Albert: I'd be so grateful.
 * Bert: Righto. Well it's about me granddad, see, and one night he had a nightmare. So bad, he chewed his pillow to bits. To bits. The next morning, I says, "How do you feel, Granddad?" He says, "Oh not bad, a little down in the mouth." [laughs] I always say there's nothing like a good joke.
 * Uncle Albert: And that was nothing like a good joke.

 * George: [As they arrive at the bank where George works] We must be on our best behavior.
 * Michael: But I thought it was your bank.
 * George: Well, I'm one of the younger officers, so in a sense it is. Sort of.

 * Michael: [about his tuppence] I want it to feed the birds.
 * Mr. Dawes, Sr.:, boy. Feed the birds and what have you got? Fat birds. But...
 * [sings] If you invest your tuppence wisely
 * in the bank safe and sound,
 * soon, the tuppence, safely invested in the bank,
 * will compound.
 * And you'll achieve that sense of conquest as you affluence expands
 * in the hands of the directors who invest... [coughs] ...As propriety... [coughs again] ...Demands. [coughs once more]
 * George: May I, Sir?
 * Mr. Dawes, Sr.: Carry on, Banks.

 * [After Jane and Michael realized that the man who startled them was only Bert as a chimney sweep for the day]
 * Jane: Bert. It's you.
 * Bert: In the flesh and at your service.
 * Michael: You're filthy.
 * Bert: Oh. Perhaps a smudge or two? It so happens that today, I'm a chimney sweep.
 * Jane: Oh, Bert, we're so frightened!
 * Bert: Now, now, don't take on so. Bert will look after you. Like I was your own father. Now who's after you?
 * Jane: Father is.
 * Bert: What?

 * [Jane and Michael have just told Bert that the run on the bank is their fault.]
 * Bert: Let's sit down. You know, begging you pardon, but the one who my heart goes out for is your father. There he is in that cold, heartless bank day after day, hemmed in by mounds of cold, heartless money. I don't like to see any living thing caged up.
 * Jane: Father? In a cage?
 * Bert: They makes cages in all sizes and shapes, you know. Bank-shaped some of 'em, carpets and all.
 * Jane: But Father isn't in trouble, we are.
 * Bert: Oh, sure about that, are you? Look at it this way. You've got your mother to look after you. And Mary Poppins and Constable Jones and me. Who looks after your father? Tell me that. When something terrible happens, what does he do? Fends for himself, he does. Who does he tell about it? No one! Don't blab his troubles at home. He just pushes on at his job, uncomplaining and alone and silent.
 * Michael: He's not very silent.
 * Jane: Michael, be quiet. And Bert, do you think father really needs our help?
 * Bert: Well, Jane, it's not my place to say. [the three of them stand up] I only observe that a father can always do it with a bit of help. Come on, I'll take you home.

 * Mary Poppins: [sings] Chim Chiminy, Chim Chiminy, When you're with a 'sweep, you're in glad company.
 * Bert: [sings] Never was there a more happier crew.
 * Both: Than them what sings Chim Chim Chiree Chim Chiroo! Chim Chim Chiminy Chim Chim Chiree Chim Chiroo.

 * George: Just a moment, Mary Poppins. What is the meaning of this outrage?
 * Mary Poppins: I beg your pardon?
 * George: Will you be good enough to explain all this?
 * Mary Poppins: First of all I would like to make one thing quite clear.
 * George: Yes?
 * Mary Poppins: I never explain anything.

 * Bert: [sings] You're a man of high position, esteemed by your peers. And when your little tykes are crying, you haven't time to dry their tears... And see their thankful little faces smiling up at you... 'Cause their dad, he always knows just what to do...
 * George: [caught off guard by this new knowledge] ...Well, look — I...
 * Bert: Like you said, Gov'ner. [sings] You've got to grind, grind, grind at that grindstone... Though childhood slips like sand through a sieve... And all too soon they've up and grown, and then they've flown... And it's too late for you to give — just that spoonful of sugar to 'elp the medicine go down — the medicine go dow-own — medicine go down. [speaks again] Well, so long, Gov'ner. Sorry to have troubled you.
 * [Bert exits, whistling ""]

 * [soft music plays and chorus vocalizing softly]
 * [bank tower bell rings]

 * Mr. Dawes, Jr.: In, an official on this bank unwisely loaned a large sum of money to finance a shipment of tea to the American colonies. Do you know what happened?
 * George: Yes, sir... yes, I think I do. As the ship lay in Boston Harbor, a party of the colonists dressed as red Indians boarded the vessel, behaved very rudely, and threw all the tea overboard, making the tea unsuitable for drinking. [jokingly] Even for Americans.
 * Mr. Dawes, Jr.: Precisely. The loan was defaulted. Panic ensued within these walls. There was a run on the bank.
 * Mr. Dawes, Sr.: From that time to this, sir, there has not been a run on this bank... until today! A run, sir, caused by the disgraceful conduct of your son, do you deny it?

 * [George has just been discharged from the bank]
 * Mr. Dawes, Sr.: Well, Banks — have you anything to say for yourself?
 * George: Well, sir... they do say that when there's nothing to say, all you can say is...
 * [He feels something in his pocket, takes it out, and looks at it: Michael's tuppence]
 * Mr. Dawes, Sr.: Confound it, Banks! I said do you have anything to say?
 * George: [starts to laugh] There's just one word, sir...!
 * Mr. Dawes, Sr.: Yes?
 * George Banks: ! [laughs]
 * Mr. Dawes, Sr.: What?
 * George: ! Mary Poppins was right! It's extraordinary! It does make you feel better! [laughs]
 * Mr. Dawes, Sr.: What are you talking about, man? There's no such word.
 * George: Oh, yes. It is a word. A perfectly good word. Actually, do you know what there's no such thing as? It turns out, with due respect, when all is said and done, that there's no such thing as you!
 * Mr. Dawes, Sr.: Impertinence, sir!
 * George: Speaking of "Impertinence," would you like to hear a perfectly marvellous joke? A real snapper!
 * Mr. Dawes, Sr.: "Joke?" "Snapper?"
 * George: Yes. There were these two wonderful young people, Jane and Michael. And they meet one day on the street, and Jane says to Michael, "I know a man with a wooden leg named Smith." And Michael said, "Really? What's the name of his other leg?" [laughs even more]
 * Mr. Dawes, Sr.: The man's gone mad! Call the guard!
 * George: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! I'm feeling better all the time!
 * [he moves toward Dawes, Sr., as if to punch him; Dawes, Jr., stands up in his father's defense]
 * Mr. Dawes, Jr.: Banks, don't you dare strike my father!
 * George: [hands Dawes Sr., the tuppence] There's the tuppence. The wonderful, faithful, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious tuppence! Guard it well! Bye-bye!
 * Mr. Dawes, Sr.: Banks, where are you going?
 * George: I don't know. I might pop through a chalk-pavement picture, and go for an outing in the country. Or I might seize a horse off a merry-go-round and win the derby! Or I might just fly a kite! Only Poppins would know!
 * Mr. Dawes, Sr.: Poppins?
 * George: My nanny. She's the one who sings that ridiculous song. [sings while he dances out of the bank] A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, the medicine go down, the medicine go down...! [Fades while door closes]
 * Mr. Dawes, Jr.: Mad as a march hare.
 * Mr. Dawes, Sr.: [caught up on the joke] A wooden leg named "Smith"... A wooden leg named "Smith"... A wooden le- [starts to wheeze-laugh before he flies up]
 * Mr. Dawes, Jr.: Father... Father! [while the Bankers try to take the chairman of the bank down] Father, come down! Daddy! Daddy, come back! [wails]

 * [The bankers see the Banks family flying a kite]
 * Mr. Dawes, Jr.: Ah, there you are, Banks! I want to congratulate you. Capitol bit of humour. "Wooden leg named 'Smith!'" [laughs and pauses] Or Jones, whatever it was. Father died laughing!
 * George: Oh, I'm so sorry, sir.
 * Mr. Dawes, Jr.: Oh, no, nonsense. Nothing to be sorry about. Never seen him happier in his life. [hands George back the flower badge] He left an opening for a new partner. Congratulations.
 * George: [delighted] Thank you, sir. Thank you very much indeed, sir!
 * [Winifred kisses her husband]

 * [As Mary Poppins watches the Banks family at the park, the parrot-shaped handle on her umbrella speaks]
 * Parrot Umbrella: [squawks] That's gratitude for you! Didn't even say goodbye.
 * Mary Poppins: No, they didn't.
 * Parrot Umbrella: Look at them! You know, they think more of their father than they do of you!
 * Mary Poppins: That's as it should be.
 * Parrot Umbrella: Well, don't you care?
 * Mary Poppins: Practically perfect people never permit sentiment to muddle their thinking.
 * Parrot Umbrella: Is that so? Well, I'll tell you one thing, Mary Poppins: you don't fool me a bit!
 * Mary Poppins: Oh, really?
 * Parrot Umbrella: Yes, really. I know exactly how you feel about these children. And if you think I'm going to keep my mouth shut any longer, I--
 * Mary Poppins: [clamps his mouth shut] That will be quite enough of that, thank you.

[music playing]

 * Bert: Good-bye, Mary Poppins. Don't stay away too long.

 * Mary Poppins: Jane! Michael! Stay close now. Oh, Bert, all your fine drawings.
 * Bert: Well, there more where they came from meantime. I'm changing businesses. This is here love hot chestnut weather.
 * Mary Poppins: Come along, children. Bye, Bert.
 * Jane: Bye, Bert.
 * Michael: Bye, Bert.

 * Michael: No, no, I won't take your nasty medicine!
 * Jane: Do we have to, Mary Poppins?
 * Mary Poppins: People who get their feet wet, must learn to take their medicine.

 * Michael: I don't want it. I'm not gonna--
 * Jane: Oh! Lime cordial! Delicious!
 * Michael: Strawberry! Mmm!

 * Mary Poppins: R-r-rum punch. Quite satisfactory.

 * [doorbell rings]

 * George: Ellen, you may now show them in, one at a time.
 * Ellen: Yes, sir. You may in one at the time.
 * Mary Poppins: Thank you.

 * The Londoners:

 * Oh, oh, oh! Let's go fly a kite up to the highest height! let's go fly a kite and send it soaring up through the atmosphere up where the air is clear oh, let's go fly a kite!

Cast

 * Juile Andrews - Mary Poppins
 * Dick van Dyke - Bert/Mr. Dawes, Sr
 * Karen Dotrice - Jane Banks
 * Matthew Gerber - Michael Banks
 * David Tomlinson - George Banks
 * Glynis Johns - Winifred Banks
 * Elsa Lanchester - Katie Nanna
 * Hermione Baddeley - Ellen
 * Reta Shaw - Mrs. Brill
 * Arthur Treacher - Constable Jones
 * Reginald Owen - Admiral Boom
 * Don Barclay - Mr. Binnacle

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Mary Poppins (film)


text:
Programming

Computer programming (often simply programming or informally, coding) is the craft of writing a set of commands or instructions that can later be compiled and/or interpreted and then inherently transformed to an executable that an electronic machine can execute or "run".

Computer Programming quotes

 * The cleaner and nicer the program, the faster it's going to run. And if it doesn't, it'll be easy to make it fast.
 * Joshua Bloch, in an interview by Peter Seibel in Coders At Work book

 * On two occasions I have been asked, – "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
 * Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864), ch. 5: "Difference Engine No. 1"

 * Playing with pointers is like playing with fire. Fire is perhaps the most important tool known to man. Carefully used, fire brings enormous benefits; but when fire gets out of control, disaster strikes.
 * John Barnes, Programming in Ada 2012, Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 189

 * The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.... Yet the program construct, unlike the poet's words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separate from the construct itself. […] The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be.
 * Fred Brooks (1975) The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering Page 7

 * And programming computers was so fascinating. You create your own little universe, and then it does what you tell it to do.
 * Vint Cerf, a "father of the internet," quoted in "Your Life: Vinton Cerf" interview with David Frank in AARP Bulletin (December 2016, Vol. 57, No. 10, p. 28.)

 * Computer programs are the most intricate, delicately balanced and finely interwoven of all the products of human industry to date. They are machines with far more moving parts than any engine: the parts don't wear out, but they interact and rub up against one another in ways the programmers themselves cannot predict.
 * James Gleick (2002) What just happened: a chronicle from the information frontier. p. 19 cited in: George Stepanek (2005) Software Project Secrets: Why Software Projects Fail. p. 10

 * Applications programming is a race between software engineers, who strive to produce idiot-proof programs, and the universe which strives to produce bigger idiots. So far the Universe is winning.
 * Rick Cook, The Wizardry Compiled (1989) Ch. 6

 * The effective exploitation of his powers of abstraction must be regarded as one of the most vital activities of a competent programmer.
 * Edsger W. Dijkstra, The Humble Programmer, 1972 Turing Award Lecture, Communications of the ACM 15 (10), (October 1972): pp. 859–866

 * Computers are man's attempt at designing a cat: it does whatever it wants, whenever it wants, and rarely ever at the right time.
 * EMCIC, Keenspot Elf Life Forum, 2001-Apr-26

 * If you lie to the computer, it will get you.
 * Perry Farrar (1985) attributed to Farrar in John Bentley (1985) "Bumper-Sticker Computer Science". In: Communications of the ACM, Vol 28. Nr.9, p. 899

 * There is no programming language, no matter how structured, that will prevent programmers from making bad programs.
 * Larry Flon (1975) "On research in structured programming". SIGPLAN Not., 10(10), pp.16–17

 * If I ask another professor what he teaches in the introductory programming course, whether he answers proudly "Pascal" or diffidently "FORTRAN," I know that he is teaching a grammar, a set of semantic rules, and some finished algorithms, leaving the students to discover, on their own, some process of design.
 * Robert Floyd (1979) "The Paradigms of Programming" 1978 Turing Award Lecture. Communications of the ACM Vol 22 (8) p. 455–460

 * No matter how slick the demo is in rehearsal, when you do it in front of a live audience, the probability of a flawless presentation is inversely proportional to the number of people watching, raised to the power of the amount of money involved.
 * Mark Gibbs

 * [This] reminds me of a quotation from somebody that, whenever he tried to explain the logical structure of a programming language to a programmer, it was like a cat trying to explain to a fish what it feels like to be wet.
 * Saul Gorn, quoted by Julien Green in Microprogramming, Emulators and Programming languages, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 9, No. 3 (March 1966), pp. 230-232

 * There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
 * C. A. R. Hoare

 * To me programming is more than an important practical art. It is also a gigantic undertaking in the foundations of knowledge.
 * Grace Hopper, quoted in Management and the Computer of the Future (1962) by Sloan School of Management, p. 277

 * Programming: when the ideas turn into the real things.
 * Maciej Kaczmarek

 * Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.
 * Alan Kay, in ACM Queue A Conversation with Alan Kay Vol. 2, No. 9 - Dec/Jan 2004-2005

 * Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
 * Donald Knuth, "Structured Programming with Goto Statements". Computing Surveys 6:4 (December 1974), pp. 261–301, §1.
 * Premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming.
 * Variant in Computer Programming as an Art, 1974 Turing Award Lecture, ''Communications of the ACM 17:12 (December 1974), pp. 667–673
 * Knuth refers to this as "Hoare's Dictum" 15 years later in "The Errors of Tex", Software—Practice & Experience 19:7 (July 1989), pp. 607–685. However, the attribution to C. A. R. Hoare is doubtful.
 * All three of these papers are reprinted in Knuth, Literate Programming, 1992, Center for the Study of Language and Information ISBN 0937073806

 * The most important thing in a programming language is the name. A language will not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a very good name, and now I am looking for a suitable language.
 * Donald Knuth (1938–)

 * "Present-day computers are designed primarily to solve preformulated problems or to process data according to predetermined procedures. The course of the computation may be conditional upon results obtained during the computation, but all the alternatives must be foreseen in advance. … The requirement for preformulation or predetermination is sometimes no great disadvantage. It is often said that programming for a computing machine forces one to think clearly, that it disciplines the thought process. If the user can think his problem through in advance, symbiotic association with a computing machine is not necessary.
 * J. C. R. Licklider (1960) Man-Computer Symbiosis |journal=Transactions on Human Factors in Electronic

 * One in a million is next Tuesday.
 * Gordon Letwin (architect for DOS 4)

 * He who hasn't hacked assembly language as a youth has no heart. He who does as an adult has no brain.
 * John Moore, playing on the French saying that "He who is not a Socialist at 20 has no heart. He who at 40 is a Socialist has no brain."

 * Languages shape the way we think, or don't.
 * Erik Naggum

 * Computer programming is tremendous fun. Like music, it is a skill that derives from an unknown blend of innate talent and constant practice. Like drawing, it can be shaped to a variety of ends – commercial, artistic, and pure entertainment. Programmers have a well-deserved reputation for working long hours, but are rarely credited with being driven by creative fevers. Programmers talk about software development on weekends, vacations, and over meals not because they lack imagination, but because their imagination reveals worlds that others cannot see.
 * Larry O'Brien and Bruce Eckel in Thinking in C#

 * The best book on programming for the layman is Alice in Wonderland, but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.
 * Alan Perlis, "Epigrams on Programming", ACM SIGPLAN Notices 17 (9), September 1982, pp. 7–13

 * Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
 * Alan Perlis, "Epigrams on Programming"

 * Prolonged contact with the computer turns mathematicians into clerks and vice versa.
 * Alan Perlis, "Epigrams on Programming"

 * Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.
 * Alan Perlis, "Epigrams on Programming"

 * There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
 * Alan Perlis, "Epigrams on Programming"

 * When someone says: "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I wish done", give him a lollipop.
 * Alan J. Perlis

 * Software and cathedrals are much the same – first we build them, then we pray.
 * Sam Redwine [Proceedings of the 4th International Software Process Workshop, Moretonhampstead, Devon, U.K., 11–13 May 1988, IEEE Computer Society]

 * Why bother with subroutines when you can type fast?
 * Vaughn Rokosz

 * A Netscape engineer who shan't be named once passed a pointer to JavaScript, stored it as a string and later passed it back to C, killing 30.
 * Blake Ross

 * Real Programmers always confuse Christmas and Halloween because Oct31 == Dec25.
 * Andrew Rutherford

 * Anyone even peripherally involved with computers agrees that object-oriented programming (OOP) is the wave of the future. Maybe one in 50 of them has actually tried to use OOP – which has a lot to do with its popularity.
 * Steve Steinberg, "Hype List", Wired, Vol. 1, No. 1, Mar/Apr 1993,

 * Don't get suckered in by the comments … they can be terribly misleading.
 * Dave Storer

 * The three chief virtues of a programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris.
 * Larry Wall – from the book Programming in Perl, Preface, Page xxi

 * One day my daughter came in, looked over my shoulder at some Perl 4 code, and said, "What is that, swearing?"
 * Larry Wall

 * Weinberg's Second Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
 * Gerald Weinberg cited in: Murali Chemuturi (2010) Mastering Software Quality Assurance: Best Practices, Tools and Technique for Software Developers. p. ix
 * Previously attributed to Dennis Hall at the Lawrence Berkeley Labs, in Clifford Stoll's "The Cuckoo's Egg" (1989), p. 89. "If people built houses the way we write programs, the first woodpecker would wipe out civilization."

 * Asking for efficiency and adaptability in the same program is like asking for a beautiful and modest wife. Although beauty and modesty have been known to occur in the same woman, we'll probably have to settle for one or the other. At least that's better than neither.
 * Gerald M. Weinberg, The Psychology of Computer Programming (1971), Chapter 2, page 22

 * All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection.
 * Attributed to David Wheeler in Diomidis Spinellis, "Another Level of Indirection", Beautiful Code (2007), ed. Andrew Oram and Greg Wilson, Section 17.6
 * … But that usually will create another problem.
 * (Less quoted second line)

 * The main activity of programming is not the origination of new independent programs, but in the integration, modification, and explanation of existing ones.
 * Terry Winograd (1991) "Beyond Programming Languages", in Artificial intelligence & software engineering, ed. Derek Partridge, p. 317

 * Zawinski's Law: Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.
 * Jamie Zawinski (who called it the "Law of Software Envelopment")

 * If you are not willing to put a fragment of your soul into the code, don’t program. Do pursue a different path instead…
 * Dmitry Galuscenko (2001), in Story of One Byte, page 15

Clive Thompson, “The Secret History of Women in Coding”, The New York Times, (Feb. 13, 2019)

 * It might seem strange now that they were happy to take on a random applicant with absolutely no experience in computer programming. But in those days, almost nobody had any experience writing code. The discipline did not yet really exist; there were vanishingly few college courses in it, and no majors. (Stanford, for example, didn’t create a computer-science department until 1965.) So instead, institutions that needed programmers just used aptitude tests to evaluate applicants’ ability to think logically.
 * Almost 200 years ago, the first person to be what we would now call a coder was, in fact, a woman: Lady Ada Lovelace. As a young mathematician in England in 1833, she met Charles Babbage, an inventor who was struggling to design what he called the Analytical Engine, which would be made of metal gears and able to execute if/then commands and store information in memory. Enthralled, Lovelace grasped the enormous potential of a device like this. A computer that could modify its own instructions and memory could be far more than a rote calculator, she realized. To prove it, Lovelace wrote what is often regarded as the first computer program in history, an algorithm with which the Analytical Engine would calculate the Bernoulli sequence of numbers. (She wasn’t shy about her accomplishments: “That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal; as time will show,” she once wrote.)
 * [A]s programming enjoyed its first burst of cultural attention, so many students were racing to enroll in computer science that universities ran into a supply problem: They didn’t have enough professors to teach everyone. Some added hurdles, courses that students had to pass before they could be accepted into the computer-science major. Punishing workloads and classes that covered the material at a lightning pace weeded out those who didn’t get it immediately. All this fostered an environment in which the students mostly likely to get through were those who had already been exposed to coding — young men, mostly. “Every time the field has instituted these filters on the front end, that’s had the effect of reducing the participation of women in particular,” says Eric S. Roberts, a longtime professor of computer science, now at Reed College, who first studied this problem and called it the “capacity crisis.”
 * In 1991, Ellen Spertus, now a computer scientist at Mills College, published a report on women’s experiences in programming classes. She cataloged a landscape populated by men who snickered about the presumed inferiority of women and by professors who told female students that they were “far too pretty” to be studying electrical engineering; when some men at Carnegie Mellon were asked to stop using pictures of naked women as desktop wallpaper on their computers, they angrily complained that it was censorship of the sort practiced by “the Nazis or the Ayatollah Khomeini.” As programming was shutting its doors to women in academia, a similar transformation was taking place in corporate America. The emergence of what would be called “culture fit” was changing the who, and the why, of the hiring process. Managers began picking coders less on the basis of aptitude and more on how well they fit a personality type: the acerbic, aloof male nerd. The shift actually began far earlier, back in the late ’60s, when managers recognized that male coders shared a growing tendency to be antisocial isolates, lording their arcane technical expertise over that of their bosses. Programmers were “often egocentric, slightly neurotic,” as Richard Brandon, a well-known computer-industry analyst, put it in an address at a 1968 conference, adding that “the incidence of beards, sandals and other symptoms of rugged individualism or nonconformity are notably greater among this demographic.” In addition to testing for logical thinking, as in Mary Allen Wilkes’s day, companies began using personality tests to select specifically for these sorts of caustic loner qualities. “These became very powerful narratives,” says Nathan Ensmenger, a professor of informatics at Indiana University, who has studied this transition. The hunt for that personality type cut women out. Managers might shrug and accept a man who was unkempt, unshaven and surly, but they wouldn’t tolerate a woman who behaved the same way. Coding increasingly required late nights, but managers claimed that it was too unsafe to have women working into the wee hours, so they forbid them to stay late with the men.

title: Programming


text:
Talk:The English Patient

I just reverted a change to this document. "A very plum, plum" emphasizing the"Plumness" of the plum, I am confident is correct, rather than "A very plumb, plum", while another change that was done at the same time I am less confident in reverting: I am aware that in the script "feelings which seem quite normal" occurs, but do believe that in the movie "feelings which seem quite wrong" is said, unfortunately I have currently loaned out my copy of English Patient on DVD to someone, so I might not be able to check which of these is right for a few days at least. ~ Kalki 09:53, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, its definitely "normal". A change as diametrically opposed as "normal" and "wrong" would not be something made lightly on set, as the change completely alters the meaning of the scene. It should be changed back to the proper quote. - Willy Shakes

title: Talk:The English Patient


text:
Wikiquote:Upload log

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title: Wikiquote:Upload log


text:
User talk:Davidcannon

Soong May-ling
I have added a "" template to the article Soong May-ling, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but it may not satisfy Wikiquote's criteria for inclusion, for the reasons given in the deletion notice (see also "What Wikiquote is not" and Wikiquote's deletion policy).

You may contest the proposed deletion by removing the  notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Votes for deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. User: Tryst (talk to me!) 15:09, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Epeli Qaraninamu Nailatikau
I have added a "" template to the article Epeli Qaraninamu Nailatikau, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but it may not satisfy Wikiquote's criteria for inclusion, for the reasons given in the deletion notice (see also "What Wikiquote is not" and Wikiquote's deletion policy).

You may contest the proposed deletion by removing the  notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Votes for deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. -Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 12:45, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

title: User talk:Davidcannon


text:
User talk:Infrogmation

You had asked about the "bug" that erases some of the formatted characters: I had assumed it was a bug in the browsers, because similar effects have occured at other sites using different software than mediawiki, but I don't actually know whether it is mostly a bug in mediawiki, in the OS, or in the browsers, or a combination of any and all of these, but it effects me as well. Whenever I have used the "Show preview" function in my preferred browser (Safari using Mac OS X), and then saved, it ALWAYS stripped the formatting of special characters. I have posted a note of this problem at various points. With myself, just avoiding the "show preview" function has always been sufficient to avoid any problems (which is why I will often have at least one minor edit after many of my major ones). I am interested in knowing whether this sort of behavior occurs with others while using other browsers and Operating systems though. ~ Kalki 09:11, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

title: User talk:Infrogmation