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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Discrimination was a problem before terrorism. Now, the bad deeds of a few people have made life worse for millions.

When you're the foreigner and your kids are the natives, they realize you're clueless much sooner than they ordinarily would. I'm pretty sure mine skipped the Mommy-is-infallible stage entirely.

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.

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

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

As an American married to an Englishman and living in France, I've spent much of my adult life trying to decode the rules of conversation in three countries. Paradoxically, these rules are almost always unspoken.

In the English books, the American kids' books, typically, there is a problem, the characters grapple with that problem, and the problem is resolved.

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.

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

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'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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.