"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
(from the Velveteen Rabbit, full text here)
Posted by nickles at September 23, 2007 02:48 AM | TrackBackAww!! I used to watch the Velveteen Rabbit when I was a kid!! That quote made me think of two of my favorite quotes, both, incedently by CS Lewis.
"Christianity is a world that is a great sculptor's shop. We are the statues and there a rumor going around the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life."
and
"Till that world can be dug out of us, why should they (the gods) hear the babble we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?"
I know I'm in the process of becoming real, cause its painful, and I'm getting ugly. I'm not 'bright and shiny' (Grey's Anatomy) anymore. But I guess that if I"m more REAL now, then it has all been worth it.
Posted by: Joanna at September 23, 2007 07:04 PMMMMM FAVORITE PART ....as much as I can remember......
Posted by: Mez at September 24, 2007 01:09 AMThat was one of my favorite books as a kid - in fact, one of the only ones I still have sitting on my shelf...
Posted by: Rebekah at October 1, 2007 01:53 PM