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" 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. "

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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.' "

Pamela Druckerman

You

Poor

Immigrant

" 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. "

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

" Soccer may not explain the world or even contain the world. But it makes the world a slightly happier place. "

" 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. "

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

" 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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" One of the maddening things about being a foreigner in France is that hardly anyone in the rest of the world knows what's really happening here. They think Paris is a socialist museum where people are exceptionally good at eating small bits of chocolate and tying scarves. "

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

" 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 you're further along in your career, you probably have more money and more means; you have to stop yourself from giving your child too much. Whereas, if you're in twenties, you might just get by. "

" The overarching conventional wisdom - what everyone from government experts to my French girlfriends take as articles of faith - is that restrictive diets generally don't make you healthier or slimmer. Instead, it's best to eat a variety of high-quality foods in moderation and pay attention to whether you're hungry. "

" 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. "

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

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

Pamela Druckerman

Because

Rules

" 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. "

" 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

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

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

" 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. "

" My husband is so upset by President Trump's scapegoating of immigrants and Muslims, he refuses to even visit the United States. "

" Around my neighborhood, I'm known as the American who talks to her computer while she types. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

Pamela Druckerman

Main

Says

" 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. "