Navigating Life Quotes

“Friends with whom you seriously fall out are death. Sometimes it will be completely your fault that this happens, and the shame and sadness of the parting will stay close for a long time.”
― Margaux Bergen, Navigating Life: Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me

“There is nothing more gracious than genuinely embracing other people's good fortune.”
― Margaux Bergen, Navigating Life: Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me

“What keeps [friends] together? Common history, some shared conquests, a delight in ideas and people and living. But they will also be distinguished by their ability to listen to you. They will not be uncritical, but they will understand and accept you. You will be interested in each other's happiness and well-being.”
― Margaux Bergen, Navigating Life: Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me

“There is an elegance to knowing who you are that will help you unfold a sweet tolerance for yourself. Knowing and liking yourself will then allow you to be kind and compassionate to others, deeply aware that they want the same things: love and contentment.”
― Margaux Bergen, Navigating Life: Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me

“You are never going to be less alone. So you must not seek to replace yourself with someone else’s attention or affection: no lover, partner, friend, parent, or child can enhance the essence of you. You do not need to look outward to be seen.”
― Margaux Bergen, Navigating Life: Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me

“I think love also means not being too invested in outcomes. You have a serious claim on each other but a casual hold. Let go. Let it be what it’s going to be: for better and for worse. Long-term love will be more exacting, less fun, and occasionally more glorious.”
― Margaux Bergen, Navigating Life: Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me

“What is ambition? It is the focus and sustained effort to achieve a goal. It is ultimately about creation. Your goal can be making money or producing goods or services - or ideas and content. It usually takes a team, unless you choose a solitary career. It helps to like people and want to see them succeed, or at least to do them no harm. You will need plenty of ambition after college, because most of what you will be doing is making something out of nothing, that precious alchemy of the human condition.”
― Margaux Bergen, Navigating Life: Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me

“Conversation is who you are. And if by his conversation or choice of words someone unconsciously shows you his true self, take that evidence and treat it seriously. And then decide if you want to continue the journey. Sometimes people are empty but articulate souls. Sometimes they are delightful and damaged. Sometimes their meanness of spirit becomes immediately obvious. You never know until you learn how to listen.”
― Margaux Bergen, Navigating Life: Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me

“Words hang in the air. They lodge in your soul. They can unwittingly inform our actions and responses for decades.”
― Margaux Bergen, Navigating Life: Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me

“This is what you need: the ability to write clearly, to think deeply and critically, and finally to own your knowledge, which will arm you in the world of work and grown-ups. The ability to develop a point of view, even if you aren't an expert, is valuable. So read the paper, listen to the news, and talk to your friends. Then own your opinion. Or, as I have done occasionally when I can't make up my mind, talk to someone whose mind you respect. Never underestimate the value of a good conversation. That is one of the first rules of adult life.”
― Margaux Bergen, Navigating Life: Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me

“Bury the shit when you can and fess up if you can't.”
― Margaux Bergen, Navigating Life: Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me

“Here's the bitch of it: You can't mourn a man who didn't love you. But that is what I will do. I will mourn quietly not being loved--for at least a while. I ought to be too grown up for childish grief and rage at such an elemental lack, but somehow I know I am not. It is the original injury.

Publicly there will be no real leave-taking: his friends are dead or long cheated in some scheme. He did not live in a community. He lived on the very edge of society and took pride in that. This was a man who had no possessions, no house, nothing of his own--a fact that he repeated over and over with a real smile. At the end it was cash only. And trail of family and friends left with worthless IOUs.”
― Margaux Bergen, Navigating Life: Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me