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

Childhood and adolescence are nothing but milestones: You grow taller, advance to new grades, and get your period, your driver's license, and your diploma. Then, in your 20s and 30s, you romance potential partners, find jobs, and learn to support yourself.

You know you're in your 40s when you've spent 48 hours trying to think of a word, and that word was 'hemorrhoids.'

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

The question on my husband's birthday is always, What do you get for the man who has nothing?

Although I wrote a book about infidelity around the world, I ended up concluding that fidelity is quite a good idea.

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

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

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.'

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