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

I've felt that if I just used initials nobody would know whether I was a man or a woman, a dog or a tiger. I could hide from view, like a bat on the underside of a branch.

And all the time he was enjoying his badness, hugging it to him as though it were a friend, and not caring a bit.

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.

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.

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