At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since. Thus begins The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, an autobiography at the height of the Catalan painter, in which real novel facts are mixed with invented anecdotes and even with intrauterine memories. The publication of the Secret Life was a definite impulse in the introduction of Dalí into American society.