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" 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. "

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" There's an American idea that you want to look as young as you can for as long as you can. If you can be mistaken for a teenager from behind into your 50s, then you've won; you've succeeded. "

Pamela Druckerman

Young

You

American

" I don't like rules, because rules, you have to follow. "

Pamela Druckerman

Because

Rules

" 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. "

Pamela Druckerman

Time

Childhood

" I've never gotten a good idea while checking Twitter or shopping. "

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

" There's this idea in America that you can be whatever you want. That remains an ideal in terms of how you dress too - when you go shopping, you try on all possible selves and then decide. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

Pamela Druckerman

Job

Life

" What you can say, what French parents say to their kids is, 'You don't have to eat everything, honey, you just have to taste it.' And it's that tasting little by little by little that gets kids more familiar with the food and more comfortable with it and more likely to eat it the next time. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Babies aren't savages. Toddlers understand language long before they can talk. "

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

" Usually, I'm so self-absorbed that my companion could be bleeding to death, and I might not notice. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

Pamela Druckerman

Always

Around

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

" When my mother in Florida mentions that she's off to play golf, I think: Golf? In the age of Trump? "

" Just do what you want more often. Don't be so worried about what other people expect. "

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

" 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. "