American-French relations, their pitch and volume, have always been influenced by the media.

Rosecrans is a family name – it used to be a last name in our family.

France and America have a long history of mutual loathing and longing. Americans still dream of Paris; Parisians still dream of the America they find in the movies of David Lynch.

When I was a kid, we didn’t eat in restaurants much, but a good report card meant my sister or I could choose anyplace in town for a dinner out, and I always picked Benny’s,...

Bookstores don’t exactly dot the American highway in the grand manner of Sbarros.

The idea being that if I was so incredibly small, then I could do almost anything, because what impact would I have, really? What damage could be done, being so puny in the big scheme?

To be human is to have a collection of memories that tells you who you are and how you got there.

If I see a roll of Bubble Tape, a bag of Haribo Gold-Bears or a pouch of green-apple Big League Chew, I’m eleven again.

When I went to Paris, I had a lot of ideas about it that were formed in the sort of ether that flows about if you watch too many recent Woody Allen movies or took...

Heads of France lead from a palace, and traditionally they retire to a cloud.

My grandmother died from Alzheimer’s, and it was a big shock. For the families left behind, it is not an easy closure. It’s not a gradual fading. The person is losing so much of their...

I like to find music that shares a rhythm with the sentences I’m working on. And though I’ll probably regret saying this, I think some songs actually don’t sound too bad when they’re played through...

Loving relatives and home-cooked meals are solid levees against a recession.

No one really knows the value of book tours. Whether or not they’re good ideas, or if they improve book sales. I happen to think the author is the last person you’d want to talk...

My father-in-law has ear hair like a wolverine. It fans out from the auricles, wafting from the ridge lines like cilia, like gray feathered plumage.

Machismo requires Latin blood. I’d say I never experienced machismo up close until I worked in a French office; the typical Wall Street gunner has the soul of a coffee filter in comparison.

I was 23 when I learned how to cook; I grew up around the same time. It was precisely then that Thanksgiving started to mean something more. Growing up, Christmas was always about me, and...

Paris’s neighborhoods, the arrondissements, are organized like a twist. They spiral from the river like toilet water flushing in reverse and erupting out of the bowl – a corkscrew or what have you, a flattened...

Venice, Italy, is one of my favorite cities, a place I’ve been lucky enough to visit twice.

I never had the idea of moving to Paris and becoming something. I liked the idea of living in Paris because it seemed to have so many parts of life I really enjoyed. The people...

My ambition was to be cosmopolitan. I grew up in the suburbs. I went to college in Maine. I had a dream in my head that if you wanted to be the most urbane, living-life-to-the-fullest...

About guns, about hunting, it’s safe to say I know nothing. The last gun I fired was a musket at Boy Scout camp.

In our town, Halloween was terrifying and thrilling, and there was a whiff of homicide. We’d travel by foot in the dark for miles, collecting candy, watching out for adults who seemed too eager to...

I think the place we love the most is the Parc des Buttes Chaumont. It’s in the 19th arrondissement. It’s where I would go jogging and my wife, Rachel, and I would go for walks....

My ideal vacation isn’t about complex maneuvers. I want to arrive somewhere foreign where I don’t speak the language, go hiking, then plop down in a sunny square, have drinks, read a book, and see...

Americans love popcorn, and their love doesn’t quit.

As a child, I was bonkers for Christmas. The entire month of December, I couldn’t sleep at night from anticipation.

In college, my wife did a study abroad in Nairobi, and I did the exact same program in Cape Town. For me, the experience of being in that other culture really set up a longing....

For years, I’ve felt an obligation to harvest an animal, since all my life I’ve so mindlessly consumed them. But that was from the safety of my desk.

By and large, the Mexican food in Paris is horrible.

The great thing about candy is that it can’t be spoiled by the adult world. Candy is innocent. And all Halloween candy pales next to candy corn, if only because candy corn used to appear,...

In Europe, it’s common to hear about young professionals living with their parents. With the continent’s high rents and taxes and its population density, it makes sense.

Lunch is the best time of day to eat in Paris. Then you get to go walk it off afterwards.

I can’t picture going to a beach, or anywhere on vacation, without a couple of books as companions.

Frankly, it’s depressing, each night sleeping in someone else’s home. I miss having a roof to my name. Our situation isn’t an ‘All in the Family’ cliche, but it’s still easy to see reality in...

My first novel, ‘You Lost Me There,’ has been described as a beach read. Tough bracket, beach reads. There’s not much room for mistakes when you’re competing against the sun for a person’s attention.

Of course, there’s no reason that Paris should have decent Mexican food. It’s a silly expectation – there’s a Mexican population in Paris, but they’re not exactly traveling there from across the border. Paris also...

I think one of my favorite things about Paris is the ever-present, nonstop beauty of the city. So I would just walk as much as possible.

Thanksgiving, our eminent moral holiday, doesn’t have much for children. At its heart are conversation, food, drink, and fellowship – all perks of adulthood.

My mother still has a three-step system to eating candy corn. First she eats the white tip, then the orange middle, then the yellow end. She swears each segment tastes different.

Tintin comics evoke Bermuda, where my parents doled out comics for good behavior and my grandmother taught me how to shuffle cards.

My confession: I listen to great music very badly.

I actually don’t think there is machismo in America, unless it’s the cowboy type – the silent, smoking brooder.

That’s the thing: once it’s in their hands, it’s not my book anymore, it’s theirs. I have no idea what happens when they start to digest it. So when someone writes me to explain how...