The same six hundred people contained both the mockery and the awe; they only needed to know which one the moment called for.

And I think that is true of most crowds, and most people: that our cruelty is usually just our ignorance, and that underneath it, more often than we believe, is a capacity for reverence waiting only for the story that unlocks it.

Julian gave them that story, not in words, but in the simple overwhelming fact of what he had done, and they rose to it.

They laughed at a boy in a dress.