# Quote — Terry Pratchett, Nation

> “Who would want to eat a madman?”
>
> Daphne shuddered. “Just so long as they don’t eat me!”
>
> “No, they would never eat a woman,” said Mau.
>
> “That’s very gentlemanly of them!”
>
> “They would feed you to their wives, so that they become beautiful.”
>
> There was one of those pauses that are icy-cold and red-hot at the same time. It was stuffed with soundless words, words that should not be said, or said another time, or in a different way, or could be said or needed to be said but couldn’t be said, and they would go on tumbling through the pause forever, or until one of them fell out—
>
> “Ahem,” said Daphne, and all the other words escaped forever.

- Author: [Terry Pratchett](https://www.leafyquotes.com/terry-pratchett.md)
- Book: [Nation](https://www.leafyquotes.com/terry-pratchett/nation.md)
- Page: 277
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nation_(novel)#Quotes) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/terry-pratchett/nation/who-would-want

## More from this book

> “That’s unfair!” said Daphne.
>
> “No, it’s science,” said her father. “‘Could have’ isn’t good enough. Nor is ‘might have’! ‘Did’ is the trick.”

p. 335 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/terry-pratchett/nation/thats-unfair-said.md)

> No one stuck up their hands and there was no voting, but she thought, I wonder if it was like this in ancient Athens? This is pure democracy. People don’t just get a vote; they have a say.

p. 276 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/terry-pratchett/nation/no-one-stuck.md)

> “What about the hangman? Doesn’t he do murder, then?”
>
> [No, because enough people say it isn’t. That’s what a courtroom is for. It’s where the law happens.]
>
> “And that makes it right? Didn’t God say, ‘Thou shalt not kill’?”
>
> [Yes. But after that it got complicated.]

p. 260 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/terry-pratchett/nation/what-about-the.md)