Child and serpent, star and stone — all one.

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.

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.

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

Who are you?" she inquired, as the cat passed by. I'm the cat that looked at a king," he replied. And I," she remarked with a toss of her head, "am the cow that jumped over the moon." Is that so?" said the cat. "Whatever for?" The cow stared. She had never been asked that question before. And suddenly it occured to her that there might something else to do than jumping over moons.

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.

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