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" Every time I pass a cafe, I imagine it being stormed by men with Kalashnikovs. "

Pamela Druckerman

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" I had applied to become French - or, rather, Franco-American, as I'm now a dual citizen - partly because I could: I'd lived and paid taxes here for long enough. "

Pamela Druckerman

" 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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" I guess we're all supposed to get used to living in a more dangerous world. "

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" I've been vacationing in western North Carolina and northern Georgia since I was a kid. I arrive, marvel at the mountains, and put on an unconvincing Southern drawl. "

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" Being an immigrant mother can be hard, but being a poor immigrant mother is much harder. You don't generally get to sit in cafes polishing your French by reading 'Le Monde.' "

Pamela Druckerman

" Optimism - even, and perhaps especially in the face of difficulty - has long been an American hallmark. "

Pamela Druckerman

" It's refreshing to have some time off from wondering whether I look fat. "

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" I'm speaking in very broad brushstrokes, but in France, there's generally this idea that you should look like the best version of the age that you are. "

Pamela Druckerman

" In my 40s, I expect to finally reap the average-looking girl's revenge. I've entered the stage of life where you don't need to be beautiful; simply by being well-preserved and not obese, I would now pass for pretty. "

Pamela Druckerman

" 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. "

Pamela Druckerman

" Around my neighborhood, I'm known as the American who talks to her computer while she types. "

Pamela Druckerman

" I'm always hoping no one is following me around with a camera. "

Pamela Druckerman

" When I was 41, I had a very bad back pain, and it turned out to be Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. "

Pamela Druckerman

" When you're the foreigner and your kids are the natives, they realize you're clueless much sooner than they ordinarily would. I'm pretty sure mine skipped the Mommy-is-infallible stage entirely. "

Pamela Druckerman

" I hear people in their 20s describe the 40s as a far-off decade of too-late, when they'll regret things that they haven't done. But for older people I meet, the 40s are the decade that they would most like to travel back to. "

Pamela Druckerman

" Podcasts immersed me in colloquial English and put me back in the American zeitgeist. "

Pamela Druckerman

" 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. "

Pamela Druckerman

" I was scared to say I was in my 40s because at that point, it sounded really old, and to out myself as a middle-aged human - I felt very awkward about it. "

Pamela Druckerman

" When I tell French parents that I know lots of American kids who will eat only pasta or only white rice, they can't believe it. I mean, they can understand how the kid left to his own devices might do that, but they can't imagine that parents would allow that to happen. "

Pamela Druckerman

" We're understandably worried that staring at screens all day, and blogging about our breakfasts, is turning America into a nation of narcissists. But the opposite might be true. "

Pamela Druckerman

" Earnestness makes British people gag. "

Pamela Druckerman

" Discrimination was a problem before terrorism. Now, the bad deeds of a few people have made life worse for millions. "

Pamela Druckerman

" Like practically everyone who grew up in Miami, I knew little about its history. We were more worried about mangoes falling on our cars. "

Pamela Druckerman

" Sometimes I just tell my kids, 'Outside of France, I'm considered completely normal.' This worked until we traveled to London. "

Pamela Druckerman

" Eating among the French certainly affected me. After a few years here, I gave up most of my selective food habits. "

Pamela Druckerman

" In your 40s, you kind of know how things are likely to go, and you're better at saying, 'You know what? That just doesn't suit me...' I remember thinking in my 30s, 'I should go to Burning Man. I could be a Burning Man person.' And in my 40s, I'm like, 'You know what? I'm never going to go to Burning Man.' "

Pamela Druckerman

" The question on my husband's birthday is always, What do you get for the man who has nothing? "

Pamela Druckerman

" The French don't think everyone should have the same bank balance, but they're offended by extremes of inequality. "

Pamela Druckerman

" 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. "

Pamela Druckerman

" We Anglophones have reasons for adopting strange diets. Increasingly, we live alone. We have an unprecedented choice of foods, and we're not sure what's in them or whether they're good for us. And we expect to customize practically everything: parenting, news, medicines, even our own faces. "

Pamela Druckerman