Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" The main thing my bookcase says about me is that I'm not French. "

Pamela Druckerman

Related Quotes:

" 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

" 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. "

Pamela Druckerman

" 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!' "

Pamela Druckerman

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

Pamela Druckerman

" This idea - that the only way to mend the relationship post-affair is through therapy - is unique to the American script. "

Pamela Druckerman

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

Pamela Druckerman

" 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 I'll only start wearing new styles of clothing once they're practically out of date, and I won't move into a neighborhood until it's fully saturated with upscale coffee shops. "

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

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

Pamela Druckerman

" I gradually understood why European mothers aren't in perpetual panic about their work-life balance and don't write books about how executive moms should just try harder: Their governments are helping them - and doing it competently. "

Pamela Druckerman

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

Pamela Druckerman

" When we're in the U.S., my kids instantly start snacking all the time. I don't know how it happens. There is just more food available all the time. There aren't all these little different varieties of snack foods in France. "

Pamela Druckerman

" A large part of the creative process is tolerating the gap between the glorious image you had in your mind and the sad thing you've just made. "

Pamela Druckerman

" 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. "

Pamela Druckerman

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

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

" Your child probably won't get into the Ivy League or win a sports scholarship. At age 24, he might be back in his childhood bedroom, in debt, after a mediocre college career. Raise him so that, if that happens, it will still have been worth it. "

Pamela Druckerman

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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. "

Pamela Druckerman

" Parisians won't admit that they go to the gym, let alone that they're scared of terrorists. "

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

" 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. "

Pamela Druckerman

" 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. "

Pamela Druckerman

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

Pamela Druckerman

" Get rid of the idea of kids' food. Kids can eat whatever adults can eat. You know, there is one dinner, and everyone has the same thing. "

Pamela Druckerman

" 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. "

Pamela Druckerman