no subject

[lotesse]

Because I stumbled over it this afternoon and it made me all snuffy:

"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 often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept."

- Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

Comments

[amelia-petkova.livejournal.com]

Holy Christ on a crutch, just yesterday I had to shelve books in the children's section and I read all of The Velveteen Rabbit for the first time. I came very close to crying, dammit.

[lotesse]

You never heard it as a kid? My mama read it to me so many times that I still hear it in her cadences. I love that book so, so much.

[theprimrosepath.livejournal.com]

I blame (thank?) early exposure to that story for my life-long unusual attachment to stuffed animals.

[lotesse]

I think we should thank it.