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" I spend much of my free time listening to podcasts of American comedians talking to each other. "

Pamela Druckerman

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" Soon after Donald Trump was inaugurated, I got a letter from France's interior ministry informing me that I was now French. By the time it arrived, I'd been French for nearly two weeks without even knowing it. "

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" One of the many problems with parenting is that kids keep changing. Just when you're used to one stage, they zoom into another. "

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" 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. "

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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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" A lot of French comedy is satire. "

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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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" My family was once invited to lunch at a chateau owned by a friend of a friend. As we drove our rental car up to the giant castle, my kids gasped and said, 'They must be rich!' "

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" In the English books, the American kids' books, typically, there is a problem, the characters grapple with that problem, and the problem is resolved. "

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" 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.' "

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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.' "

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" While I love walking past those beautifully lit bookstores in my neighborhood, what I mostly buy there are blank notebooks and last-minute presents for children's birthdays. "

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" Teach your kids emotional intelligence. Help them become more evolved than you are. Explain that, for instance, not everyone will like them. "

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

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" I've got letters from all over the world saying what you're describing as American parenting is Chilean middle-class parenting, or it is Finnish middle-class parenting, or it is Slovak middle-class parenting. "

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" French children seem to be able to play by themselves in a way. "

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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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" Remember that the problem with hyper-parenting isn't that it's bad for children; it's that it's bad for parents. "

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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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" I think kids in France, and certainly in my household, don't necessarily stop interrupting when you tell them, but they gradually become more aware of other people, and that means that you can have the expectation of finishing a conversation. "

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

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" 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. "

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

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" If you want to know how old you look, just walk into a French cafe. It's like a public referendum on your face. "

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

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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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" Even for natives, French satire is rarely laugh-out-loud funny. Its unspoken punch line is typically that things have gone irrevocably wrong, and the government is to blame. "

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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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" I've gotten used to being a foreigner. "

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