Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929 – 1994)
Wife of the 35th president of the United States, John F Kennedy, and served as First Lady during his presidency from 1961 until his assassination in 1963.
She made a rare and noble contribution to the American spirit. But for us, most of all she was a magnificent wife, mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, and friend. She graced our history. And for those of us who knew and loved her, she graced our lives.
There'd been the biggest motorcade from the airport. Hot. Wild. Like Mexico and Vienna. The sun was so strong in our faces. I couldn't put on sunglasses... Then we saw this tunnel ahead, I thought it would be cool in the tunnel, I thought if you were on the left the sun wouldn't get into your eyes...
First the world will call me Bouvier, then I'll change to Jackie K. After my date with tragedy, I will let Aristotle take care of me, I want to be Jackie Onassis oh yeah....
One of the things I like about publishing is that you don't promote the editor — you promote the book and the author.
You are about to have your first experience with a Greek lunch. I will kill you if you pretend to like it.
Whenever I was upset by something in the papers, [Jack] always told me to be more tolerant, like a horse flicking away flies in the summer.
Minimum information given with maximum politeness.
I held his hand all the time the priest was saying extreme unction.
She changed the White House from a plastic to a crystal bowl.
The ring was all blood-stained... so I put the ring on Jack's finger... and then I kissed his hand...
The trouble with me is that I’m an outsider. And that’s a very hard thing to be in American life.
The children have been a wonderful gift to me, and I’m thankful to have once again seen our world through their eyes. They restore my faith in the family’s future.
Dear God, please take care of your servant John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
A newspaper reported I spend $30,000 a year buying Paris clothes and that women hate me for it. I couldn’t spend that much unless I wore sable underwear.
I said, "I want to be in there when he dies"... so Burkeley forced his way into the operating room and said, "It's her prerogative, it's her prerogative..." and I got in, there were about forty people there. Dr. Perry wanted to get me out. But I said "It's my husband, his blood, his brains are all over me."
What is sad for women of my generation is that they weren’t supposed to work if they had families. What were they to do when the children were grown — watch raindrops coming down the windowpane?
His head was so beautiful. I tried to hold the top of his head down, maybe I could keep it in... but I knew he was dead.
It was a very spasmodic courtship, conducted mainly at long distance with a great clanking of coins in dozens of phone booths.
The moment when she crawled out onto the back of the open limousine in which her husband had been murdered was the first and last time the American people would see Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis crawl... She was the last great private public figure in this country. In a time of gilt and glitz and perpetual revelation, she was perpetually associated with that thing so difficult to describe yet so simple to recognize, the apotheosis of dignity.
I do not think it altogether inappropriate to introduce myself to this audience. I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.