The vitality of a culture is in its capacity to assimilate foreign influences. The culture that's defensive and closed condemns itself to decadence.

In times when religious or political faith or hope predominates, the writer functions totally in unison with society, and expresses society's feelings, beliefs, and hopes in perfect harmony.

In my opinion, the most significant works of the twentieth century are those that rise beyond the conceptual tyranny of genre; they are, at the same time, poetry, criticism, narrative, drama, etc.

Marks of Identity is, among other things, the expression of the process of alienation in a contemporary intellectual with respect to his own country.

In Count Julian I simply proposed to create a text which would allow for diverse levels of reading.

The fundamental purpose of a novel like Count Julian is to achieve the unity of object and means of representation, the fusion of treason as scheme and treason as language.

My exile was not only a physical one, motivated exclusively by political reasons; it was also a moral, social, ideological and sexual exile.