Diana (19 page)

She told
Majesty
magazine editor-in-chief Ingrid Seward: “No one understands what it is like to be me. Not my friends, not anyone.”

By 1996, Diana had this to say about the “Queen of Hearts” moniker given to her by the press, in a sense trivializing her good works: “It’s my biggest regret. It is embarrassing and keeps coming back to haunt me.”

After a particularly exhausting day in Chicago in 1996, an organizer asked Diana how she did it all. She replied, “I am so tired right now I could put my head down on the table and fall asleep.” And then she pulled herself up and said, “Commitment and duty.”

Diana once told a woman with speech and hearing difficulties: “It’s probably just as well you can’t hear me very well.”

In Sydney she quoted a poem by the Australian Adam Lindsay Gordon: “‘Life is mostly froth and bubble, / Two things stand like stone / Kindness in another’s trouble, / Courage in your own.’”

“I see myself as a princess for the world, not the Princess of Wales.”

“I pay a great deal of attention to people, and I remember them,” she told the French newspaper
Le Monde
in her final interview. “Every meeting, every visit is special.”

“Being constantly in the public eye gives me a special responsibility, particularly that of using the impact of photographs to transmit a message, to sensitize the world to an important cause, to defend certain values.”

“If I must define my role, I’d rather use the word ‘messenger.’”

“Anywhere I see suffering, that is where I want to be, doing what I can.”

“Nobody can dictate my conduct. I work on instinct. It’s my best advisor.”

“If I’m going to talk on behalf of any cause, I want to go and see the problem for myself and learn about it.”

Diana was caught in a downpour at a charity function in 1991. “I’m like a drowned rat. It’s a good job I’m going to a blind home next.”

“Nothing would upset me more than just being a name on top of a piece of paper. I think it is important that you should show you are interested and not just breezing in and out.”