Mireille Guiliano

I find it so unattractive when women wear sneakers with their business suits. I wear a nice pair of loafers or low-heeled pumps, and that's that.

Make treating yourself a priority and always remember your life is happening now. Don't put off all your dreams and pleasures to another day. In any balanced personal definition of success there has to be a powerful element of living life in the present.

Intelligence, knowledge or experience are important and might get you a job, but strong communication skills are what will get you promoted.

Taking care of your mental and physical health is just as important as any career move or responsibility.

My friends say everything I touch turns to gold. I'll say, 'I've been very lucky.'

I've never been ambitious.

Of course there are fat French women. There are fat people everywhere.

We women are so judged by the way we dress, and men are not. So style is part of developing your own brand.

With technology, there is so much isolation with people now, that there are very few places where you can connect.

We only have one body, and you have to show respect for it.

People are unhappy when they are on diets, because it's 'don't do this, don't do that, do this, do that.'

Scientifically, it has been proven that after three bites, your palate has been satisfied. It doesn't matter what you eat. So if you eat one boule of ice cream, that's all you need. You don't have to eat pint after pint after pint.

Being and working in America, it's very important to work hard, work smart and work in a certain way. France and Europe has, with the tradition and culture, it's slow-moving and it's not always good.

Once you have to start counting calories, it takes away from the joy of eating.

In America, you look at food as bad and guilty. In France, we love food and we enjoy food; food is pleasure.

When I grew up in France, I was a normal size. And then I came to the United States and I gained 20 pounds.

In France we have a saying, 'Joie de vivre,' which actually doesn't exist in the English language. It means looking at your life as something that is to be taken with great pleasure and enjoy it.

In the U.S., too many yogurts are filled with corn syrup, preservatives, artificial this and that. To me, this is poison.

I cannot live without flowers everywhere. I grew up having a big garden, the size of a city block, in Rombas.

I can never leave a bookstore without buying a book. I read four or five at a time.

French women don't have too many clothes - a few good pieces that last for a while and are classic and timeless.

I'm not a great consumer. I always ask myself, 'Do I really need that piece?' I have friends who have 300 pairs of shoes; how would you leave the house in the morning?

Women are smarter by basic instinct and by what we have to do to multitask at home and at work. My mother did that 50 years ago, but it wasn't called multitasking or stress back then. She had a job, two kids and the meals to make with no cook or maid. My father would come home every day and expect lunch. He was a nice guy, but he was clueless!

Quality of life is very important in France. I have many friends who turned down promotions and more money because it would affect their quality of life as a couple or a mother.

The word that I constantly hear out of women is 'fear.' It's almost like a background melody. Women have excellent degrees and experience, but we are afraid we aren't good enough because we have such high expectations.