Pamela Druckerman Quotes
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The French view is really one of balance, I think... What French women would tell me over and over is, it's very important that no part of your life - not being a mom, not being a worker, not being a wife - overwhelms the other part.
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Here's some news you might find surprising: By and large, the French like Jews.
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I spend much of my free time listening to podcasts of American comedians talking to each other.
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Like practically everyone who grew up in Miami, I knew little about its history. We were more worried about mangoes falling on our cars.
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As an American married to an Englishman and living in France, I've spent much of my adult life trying to decode the rules of conversation in three countries. Paradoxically, these rules are almost always unspoken.
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Sometimes I just tell my kids, 'Outside of France, I'm considered completely normal.' This worked until we traveled to London.
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In the Nineties, there was all this new research into brain development, with evidence saying poor kids fall behind in school because no one is talking to them at home, no one is reading to them. And middle-class parents seized on this research.
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Just as dressing well in your forties entails making choices that reflect who you are and not just wearing generic basics, looking good as you get older requires accentuating and enjoying what's specific to you rather than striving for cookie-cutter perfection.
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Before Donald Trump took office, optimism about his presidency was the lowest of any president-elect since at least the 1970s.
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Not many foreigners move to Paris for their dream job. Many do it on a romantic whim.
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Practically every time I speak up at a school conference, a political event, or my apartment building association's annual meeting, I'm met with a display of someone else's superior intelligence.
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When I moved to Europe 12 years ago, my biggest concern was whether I'd ever speak decent French. Practically every American I knew came to visit, many saying they dreamed of living here, too.
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Usually, I'm so self-absorbed that my companion could be bleeding to death, and I might not notice.
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The French talk about education, the education of their children. They don't talk about raising kids. They talk about education. And that has nothing to do with school. It's this kind of broad description of how you raise children and what you teach them.
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Unlike the time sink of binge-watching a TV series, podcasts actually made me more efficient. Practically every dull activity - folding laundry, applying makeup - became tolerable when I did it while listening to a country singer describing his hardscrabble childhood, or a novelist defending her open marriage.
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The overarching conventional wisdom - what everyone from government experts to my French girlfriends take as articles of faith - is that restrictive diets generally don't make you healthier or slimmer. Instead, it's best to eat a variety of high-quality foods in moderation and pay attention to whether you're hungry.
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Optimism - even, and perhaps especially in the face of difficulty - has long been an American hallmark.
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When my kids correct my cultural missteps, I sometimes suspect that they're not embarrassed, they're gleeful.
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My husband is so upset by President Trump's scapegoating of immigrants and Muslims, he refuses to even visit the United States.
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This idea - that the only way to mend the relationship post-affair is through therapy - is unique to the American script.
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When people used to ask me what I missed about America, I would say, 'The optimism.' I grew up in the land of hope, then moved to one whose catchphrases are 'It's not possible' and 'Hell is other people.' I walked around Paris feeling conspicuously chipper.
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You know you're in your 40s when you've spent 48 hours trying to think of a word, and that word was 'hemorrhoids.'
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And as a mother of three with a full-time job, podcasts gave me the illusion of having a vibrant social life. I was constantly 'meeting' new people. My favorite hosts started to seem like friends: I could detect small shifts in their moods and tell when they were flirting with guests.
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I'm not an early adopter. I'll only start wearing new styles of clothing once they're practically out of date, and I won't move into a neighborhood until it's fully saturated with upscale coffee shops.