The Left Hand of Darkness: 50th Anniversary Edition (Ace Science Fiction)

when action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

choler,

phlegm

perfidy,

effrontery

laconic.

I don’t trust Estraven, whose motives are forever obscure; I don’t like him; yet I feel and respond to his authority as surely as I do to the warmth of the sun.

when action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

Then the people of the Hearth rose up against the other brother and drove him out of Hearth and Domain, laying the shame of the suicide upon him. And since his own lord had exiled him and his story went before him, none would take him in, but after the three days’ guesting all sent him from their doors as an outlaw.

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.”