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" 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

Our

True

America

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

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

" 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. "

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

Pamela Druckerman

Dangerous

Used

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

" 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. "

" The French view is really one of balance, I think... What French women would tell me over and over is, it's very important that no part of your life - not being a mom, not being a worker, not being a wife - overwhelms the other part. "

" 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.' "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" Certain woman will be jealous of how skinny you are, no matter what's causing it. "

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

" 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

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" I spent most of my adolescence feeling awkward but never once mentioned it. "

" 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. "

" 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

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

" 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.' "

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