P. L. Travers Quotes

One of the things I liked about writing for a magazine was a kind of anonymity. When you do books, it's different than magazine pieces because you become a 'figure.'

I've been waiting a long time to be a children's book author. I've spent decades getting good enough to write for children. When a kid likes my book, or just likes that I'm visiting and talking to him or her, and I get a hug, I feel reborn. That hug that says you made a connection - there's nothing better in the whole wide world.

The books we enjoy as children stay with us forever -- they have a special impact. Paragraph after paragraph and page after page, the author must deliver his or her best work.

I always feel like my book is a success when I see a child reading it, and they have their pointer finger out, and they kind of keep their place as they look all around the page. I've always been impressed by how children are so observant.

Children's books are looked on as a sideline of literature. A special smile. They are usually thought to be associated with women. I was determined not to have this label of sentimentality put on me so I signed by my intials, hoping people wouldn't bother to wonder if the books were written by a man, woman or kangaroo.

I’m one of those very lucky people who absolutely love what they do for a living. There is no career better suited to my eccentricities, strengths, and passions than that of a children’s book author.

Ninety percent of the children’s books patronize the child and say there’s a difference between you and me, so you listen to this story. I, for some reason or another, don’t do that. I treat the child as an equal.

When I was little I used to wish I could talk to the illustrators because I wanted to discuss something about the books. With so many of the other art forms that children experience, such as movies and television, they don't get to control the pace.

Children's reading and children's thinking are the rock-bottom base upon which this country will rise. Or not rise. In these days of tension and confusion, writers are beginning to realize that books for children have a greater potential for good or evil than any other form of literature on earth.

I hope to encourage more children to discover and love reading, but I want to focus particularly on the appreciation of picture books…. Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older. The best ones leave a tantalising gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that is filled by the reader's imagination, adding so much to the excitement of reading a book.

And so I write the way I myself would like the book to be – if I were a child. I write for the child within me.

From the time I began to read, as a child, I loved to feel their heft in my hand and the warm spot caused by their intimate weight in my lap; I loved the crisp whisper of a page turning, the musky odor of old paper and the sharp inky whiff of new pages. Leather bindings sent me into ecstasy. I even loved to gaze at a closed book and daydream about the possibilities inside.

Lemony Snicket. Now, I'm told - the books, of course, starting from the very first one, became hugely popular, selling millions and millions. And I understand that when you used to go around to talk to your very young fans, you would appear as Lemony Snicket's representative or agent.

All these teachers and [screenwriting] books mean you see movies that have been worked over by more committees wielding more rules, that all originality and authorship is lost. That's why you're seeing superstars like Brad Pitt in THE FIGHT CLUB and Tom Cruise in MAGNOLIA. They're desperately searching for people writing and directing off-formula movies.

When a child keeps asking you to tell him/her a story, what they instinctively really want to know -- is their true purpose and mission in life. Sadly, this knowledge was never sought out by their parents, and explains why childrens books are a very hot and lucrative industry. Instead of telling your child the truth of our history and existence, you are conditioned by society to simply read your kid a fairytale.

Books have their destinies like men. And their fates, as made by generations of readers, are very different from the destinies foreseen for them by their authors. Gulliver's Travels, with a minimum of expurgation, has become a children's book; a new illustrated edition is produced every Christmas. That's what comes of saying profound things about humanity in terms of a fairy story.

You may be surprised to know that growing up, I wanted to be a writer of children's books.

Whenever they tell me children want this sort of book and children need this sort of writing, I am going to smile politely and shut my earlids. I am a writer, not a caterer. There are plenty of caterers. But what children most want and need is what we and they don't know they want and don't think they need, and only writers can offer it to them.

I am committed to writing appropriate books for the middle grades. This means no bad language, no gratuitous or explicit violence, and no sexual content beyond what you might find in a PG-rated movie – expressions of who likes whom, holding hands, and perhaps the occasional kiss. The idea that we should treat sexual orientation itself as an adults-only topic, however, is absurd. Non-heterosexual children exist. To pretend they do not, to fail to recognize that they have needs for support and validation like any child, would be bad teaching, bad writing, and bad citizenship.

Censors never go after books unless kids already like them. I don’t even think they know to go after books until they know that children are interested in reading this book, therefore there must be something in it that’s wrong.

When you're old enough to write a book for children, by then you'll have become a grown up and have lost all your jokeyness. Unless you're an undeveloped adult and still have an enormous amount of childishness in you.

If I revise a children's book, if I'm spending three hours on the first draft, I'm probably spending 30 minutes revising it. I mean, come on! But to redo a painting? That's hard work.

I don't really read children's books or deal with children's books, so I don't have any relationship with them other than my own.

Books transmit values. They explore our common humanity. What is the message when some children are not represented in those books?

Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales-because they find them romantic.