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Inspiration September 22, 2017
"I cannot summon up inspiration; I myself am summoned."
Pamela Lyndon Travers, better known as P.L. Travers, created the “Mary Poppins” books after telling the story of a magical nanny who used an umbrella as a form of transportation and had the ability to serve tea parties on the ceiling to her sisters.
Travers didn’t know this book would launch her career into the spotlight.
While her books were a huge success, she wept at the premiere of the 1964 Disney movie adaptation of the book.
It took Walt Disney 20 years to convince Travers into turning the book into a Disney movie, and Travers only ended up agreeing because she needed money.
While the movie wasn’t Travers’ dream, she still captured the hearts of audiences all around the world with her creation of the Mary Poppins character.
Her book aged well as the book is still widely read and movie adaptations are still being made. The word “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” is part of the English language at this point.
Travers’ choice to hide her real name to keep people from judging her book based on her gender speaks to the situation of many women writers such as Mary Shelley and the Brontë sisters.
As a female writer, she had a lot of cards stacked against her but she still came out successful. This was mostly due to the fact that she lived in a world of fantasy and imagination since she was a child. She was raised by a father who instilled her love for storytelling into her before he allowed the bottle consume him.
She allowed her adversity become her driving force.
So, we compiled a list of famous P.L. Travers quotes on childhood and imagination to inspire your creative side.
“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.”
“A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.”
“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.”
“I cannot summon up inspiration; I myself am summoned.”
“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.”
“You can ask me anything you like about my work, but I’ll never talk about myself.”
“Sorrow lies like a heartbeat behind everything I have written.”
“More and more I’ve become convinced that the great treasure to possess is the unknown.”
“I’ve had quite a lot to conquer in myself apart from writing. Not that I’ve been a pure angel when I come to the end of it.”
P.L. Travers’ love for storytelling and mythology sparked her writing career. With a father who died when she a young child, Travers lived a life of tragedy. But instead of letting it defeat her, she used her sorrow to guide her stories.
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