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

I not only lived physically away from my native land, but the values and critical judgments of those closest to me became stranger and stranger.

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

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.

The writer cannot abandon himself simply to inspiration, and feign innocence vis a vis language, because language is never innocent.

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.

And with each day that passed, the gulf broadened and my isolation became more accentuated. In such a situation, the discovery that my experience was not unique, that it had also been that of other Spanish intellectuals, became very important for me.