What is real?
"What is REAL?" asked the rabbit one day, when
there 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 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 play with you, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."...
"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. 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 by Margery
Williams