"When I protested because they wouldn't buy me new skates or if someone complained a teacher gave too..." — Jean Kennedy Smith

As I've grown older, I have begun to marvel... at how much of my life I have spent among ghosts. These are no malevolent presences... Rather, they are such restless spirits as only the strange twentieth-century cocktail of celebrity, technology and collective memory could produce.

I never sat down and said, 'Now I must make a contribution, that one person can make a difference.' But I felt I was in a position where I could contribute. I never thought of it in the light of history or my brothers. I just felt I had an obligation.

When I looked at my mother, I always saw a bit of Ireland. And I suppose when I look to Ireland, I see a bit of my mother - her faith, her wit, her endurance.