“It's really weird but my parents used to tell me I could do anything I wanted to. I used to say, 'Well, what if I want to be an astronaut and go to the moon?" and my dad used to say, 'If you really want to you can'. I used to think he was talking absolute rubbish, particularly when I was 21 and he was still saying that. But in a way it really stuck with me cos my dad ended up doing exactly what he wanted to do. To an outside point of view he's totally conformed, he's had a family and four kids but he's only ever done things that made him genuinely happy. "He jacked in his job cos it made him unhappy and he didn't want to compromise his entire life just for the sake of carrying it through. It's very admirable, that quality, and I think it's very rare in people. Most people feel so conditioned, so oppressed by everything that goes on around them that they just give in. You have to refuse to give in.”

“My mother, my dad and I left Cuba when I was two [January, 1959]. Castro had taken control by then, and life for many ordinary people had become very difficult. My dad had worked [as a personal bodyguard for the wife of Cuban president Batista], so he was a marked man. We moved to Miami, which is about as close to Cuba as you can get without being there. It's a Cuba-centric society. I think a lot of Cubans moved to the US thinking everything would be perfect. Personally, I have to say that those early years were not particularly happy. A lot of people didn't want us around, and I can remember seeing signs that said: "No children. No pets. No Cubans." Things were not made easier by the fact that Dad had begun working for the US government. At the time he couldn't really tell us what he was doing, because it was some sort of top-secret operation. He just said he wanted to fight against what was happening back at home. [Estefan's father was one of the many Cuban exiles taking part in the ill-fated, anti-Castro Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow dictator Fidel Castro. ] One night, Dad disappered. I think he was so worried about telling my mother he was going that he just left her a note. There were rumours something was happening back home, but we didn't really know where Dad had gone. It was a scary time for many Cubans. A lot of men were involved -- lots of families were left without sons and fathers. By the time we found out what my dad had been doing, the attempted coup had taken place, on April 17, 1961. Intitially he'd been training in Central America, but after the coup attempt he was captured and spent the next wo years as a political prisoner in Cuba. That was probably the worst time for my mother and me. Not knowing what was going to happen to Dad. I was only a kid, but I had worked out where my dad was. My mother was trying to keep it a secret, so she used to tell me Dad was on a farm. Of course, I thought that she didn't know what had really happened to him, so I used to keep up the pretence that Dad really was working on a farm. We used to do this whole pretending thing every day, trying to protect each other. Those two years had a terrible effect on my mother. She was very nervous, just going from church to church. Always carrying her rosary beads, praying her little heart out. She had her religion, and I had my music. Music was in our family. My mother was a singer, and on my father's side there was a violinist and a pianist. My grandmother was a poet.”

“I never got along with my dad. Kids used to come up to me and say, "My dad can beat up your dad." I'd say Yeah? When?”

“What did Doctor Doom really want? He wanted to rule the world. Now, think about this. You could walk across the street against a traffic light and get a summons for jaywalking, but you could walk up to a police officer and say "I want to rule the world," and there's nothing he can do about it, that is not a crime. Anybody can want to rule the world. So, even though he was the Fantastic Four's greatest menace, in my mind, he was never a criminal!”

“What do you want from me?" he asks.
What I want from every person in my life, I want to tell him.
More.”

“You're my sister," he said finally. "My sister, my blood, my family. I should want to protect you"- he laughed soundlessly and without any humor- "to protect you from the sort of boys who want to do with you exactly what I want to do.”

“Wherever I am, there's always Pooh,
There's always Pooh and Me.
Whatever I do, he wants to do,
"Where are you going today?" says Pooh:
"Well, that's very odd 'cos I was too.
Let's go together," says Pooh, says he.
"Let's go together," says Pooh.”

“Tonight, I also want to say that I'm also thinking about my mother and father. I know my mother would be completely over the moon about this. I think my dad would too. I'm sorry he couldn't see this. This really was his life’s work but I can say this: I know how proud he'd be of the province we all love.”

“Thomas Paine was kind of the — oh, I don't know. My apologies to Thomas Paine, but kind of the me of the genera— I mean, I can't think of anybody else. A guy just saying, "Hey, really, stand up. Come on. We can do it." He was kind of the — he was the media guy, really. He just did pamphlets, the rest of us just do TV.”

“My dad had limitations. That's what my good-hearted mom always told us. He had limitations, but he meant no harm. It was kind of her to say, but he did do harm.”