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" French schools follow a national curriculum that includes arduous surveys of French philosophy and literature. Frenchmen then spend the rest of their lives quoting Proust to one another, with hardly anyone else catching the references. "

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" 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

Pretty

You

Your

" 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. "

" When my kids correct my cultural missteps, I sometimes suspect that they're not embarrassed, they're gleeful. "

" The whole point of a commencement speech is to say something encouraging. "

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

Pamela Druckerman

Always

Around

" If you had asked me what I wanted when I was 12 years old, I probably would have said, 'To marry a plastic surgeon.' You can hardly blame me: I was growing up in Miami. "

" 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

France

You

" Having lived in America and France, I've been on both sides of the picky-eating divide. "

" One of the great joys of a creative life is that your observations and loose moments aren't lost forever; they live in your work. "

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

" Before Donald Trump took office, optimism about his presidency was the lowest of any president-elect since at least the 1970s. "

" 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. "

" Parisiennes rarely walk around wearing the giant diamonds that are de rigueur in certain New York neighborhoods. "

" It's fine to discuss money in France, as long as you're complaining that you don't have enough, or boasting about getting a bargain. "

" America's parenting customs can shock foreigners. "

" Here's some news you might find surprising: By and large, the French like Jews. "

" 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. "

" Although I wrote a book about infidelity around the world, I ended up concluding that fidelity is quite a good idea. "

" 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. "

" The French aren't known for being hilarious. When I told Parisians I was interested in French humor, they'd say 'French what?' "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" I always knew the French had a penchant for criticism and abstract thought. Usually, that just meant they complained a lot. "

" I think, in writing a memoir, you kind of give order to your life. "

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

" I'm a third-generation Miamian. I'm fond of it. I'm an expatriate, so it's the only American city I can still legitimately claim. "

" A lot of French comedy is satire. "

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