--- a/markup/builder.py
+++ b/markup/builder.py
@@ -131,6 +131,10 @@
     >>> print Element('p')('Hello ', Element('b')('world'))
     <p>Hello <b>world</b></p>
 
+    Quotes are not escaped inside text nodes:
+    >>> print Element('p')('"Hello"')
+    <p>"Hello"</p>
+
     Elements can also be combined with other elements or strings using the
     addition operator, which results in a `Fragment` object that contains the
     operands:

--- a/markup/core.py
+++ b/markup/core.py
@@ -239,7 +239,8 @@
         return '<%s "%s">' % (self.__class__.__name__, self)
 
     def join(self, seq):
-        return Markup(unicode(self).join([escape(item) for item in seq]))
+        return Markup(unicode(self).join([escape(item, quotes=False)
+                                          for item in seq]))
 
     def stripentities(self, keepxmlentities=False):
         """Return a copy of the text with any character or numeric entities