Sean Hepburn Ferrer

“It's OK to choose your path, have a dream, not a fake one, and never let it get to your head then.”

“Once the war started, my grandfather went to England, where he was under house arrest on the Isle of Man, and then to Ireland, but not to Germany. In no way did he, or my grandmother for that matter, ever support either the war or the Holocaust.”

“She lost a couple of pregnancies before me. It was sort of this great healing for her to finally have a child.”

“My mother believed strongly that every life matters. She demonstrated on a daily basis, particularly through her humanitarian work as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, her strong belief in the value of every life.”

“People say to me, 'What do you think your mother would think about this new world with Instagram?' And I pause and I just say, 'Well, she really was the queen of Instagram because she was more photographed than anyone else.'”

“She was humble and put herself down. She felt her feet were a little too big and she had a bump on her nose and a crooked tooth. But she didn't get the tooth fixed. She didn't get the nose broken and set straight. She worked with what she had.”

“We had a good education, but we didn't walk away feeling better than anybody else.”

“We are brought together by the great feelings and it is the little stuff that breaks us apart.”

“It's not just a world of dog-eat-dog and Trumps and all of this... there are people and there is hope and you can still get there and have a reasonable measure of success and appreciation.”

“Our mother believed in education above all.”

“Not only did she represent inner and outer beauty and elegance, but all the work she did at the end of her life touched so many people. She created this extraordinary legacy.”

“I'm always opening magazines and seeing pictures of her in advertisements. Or I'll be in a hotel room in Tokyo and there she will be, on the television. Or I'll be walking through an airport or driving along a freeway and there she will be on a billboard.”

“My mother was a biographer's dream and a nightmare. She was a dream because she was a classic to write about and everybody loves her. She was a nightmare because there are no scandals, quasi-cruelties, no really juicy stuff.”

“She trained as a ballet dancer yet she was an iron fist in a velvet glove. My younger brother Luca and I had a wonderful childhood since she would try to guide us gently down the right path.”

“She performed for the Dutch Resistance, not just to raise money but also to entertain people and to take their minds off the horrors they were living through. They would do plays and little musicals, trying to be discreet and not bring the attention of the soldiers.”

“My mother often used to speak about her time during the war and during the famous hunger winter in Holland - in the latter part of the war there was no heating and very little food and so her mother used to say, 'You stay in bed most of the day to preserve your calories.'”

“You have to dream in a wholesome way, not just dream about yourself, but dream about what's best for all.”

“This woman who was a style icon basically lived in a little cotton dress all her life - a simple life.”

“My stepfather was a brilliant and funny psychiatrist but he was a hound dog. He just didn't know how to be faithful.”

“She often used to talk about the fact that during the war, her mother, because there was a little food and no heating, would have her stay in bed throughout the day, especially during the Dutch Hunger Winter, to preserve her calories.”