Yesterday, I noticed a comment, a good friend of mine, had made on Facebook about The Velveteen Rabbit. She said that her all time favorite quote is from that book. I agreed. For years, I had a quote from the Velveteen Rabbit posted on my bulletin board at work. I used it in various presentations and I even recall including it in a college paper.This morning I woke up to a message from her. She suggested that the quote "nicely coincides" with yesterday's blog post, and included the quote. Jillonious, THANK YOU!
When I reread it, I remembered how much I liked it - and I realized that with the passage of time, this quote has even more meaning for me. So I thought I would share it.
"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."
What is you all-time favorite quote?
