Mama Blanca, who on her death bequeathed me fond memories and some five hundred sheets of linen paper written in her fine, wavering English handwriting, was no relation of mine. Those pages, written toward the close of her life, and which I cherish tenderly, have the humble, monotonous simplicity that characterized her domestic existence, and, unbound, bulky, were fastened together at the back with a narrow silk cord whose color time and the touch of my fingers and those of the departed had blurred. It was not kinship that bound me to Mama Blanca, but mysterious spiritual affinities that in the commerce of souls weave the brief or enduring web of sympathy, friendship, or love, which are separate stages in that supreme joy of mutual understanding. (beginning of "Foreword")
— TERESA DE LA PARRA