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

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

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.

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

If you want to find Cherry-Tree Lane all you have to do is ask the Policeman at the cross-roads.

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.

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.