Only to me he showed his heart of gold, his high and noble character, his deep feeling--a prickly pear, outside rough and inside honey-sweet.

He brought me up as if I was to be a cabinet minister, and treated me like a beloved comrade from the time I was twelve, so that my mother was often jealous of me.

When I grew up, he would sometimes say, 'Whoever wants to marry my Pilar will have to fight with me first.' And he meant it.

You probably know that we develop early in Spain.

At sixteen I was not very different from what I am now.