# Quote — Richard Rodriguez, Darling

> Family trips of my childhood always began with a prayer. I suppose when one goes on vacation, one is courting death in some fashion, tying the morgue tags onto one’s suitcase. But then, too, vacations are respites from death, from thoughts of death. I have sometimes wondered why friends under medical death sentences have undertaken arduous trips or undertaken arduous labors. To put some distance between themselves and death—the obvious answer.

- Author: [Richard Rodriguez](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez.md)
- Book: [Darling](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez/darling.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Rodriguez#Darling:_A_Spiritual_Autobiography_(2013)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez/darling/family-trips-of-my-childhood

## More from this book

> When Cesar Chavez died in his sleep in 1993, not yet a very old man at sixty-six, he died—as he had so often portrayed himself in life—as a loser.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez/darling/when-cesar-chavez.md)

> My brother and I have, after many years, achieved our importance to each other as a difference. Because it is sometimes difficult for my brother to climb the steps to my apartment, he will often come by and we will sit in his car and talk. We quite enjoy one another’s company. My brother is no less a good man for not believing in God; and I am no better a man because I believe. It is simply that religion gives me a sense—no, not a sense, a reason, no, not exactly a reason, an understanding—that everyone matters.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez/darling/my-brother-and.md)

> No Chavez speech I have read or heard approaches the rhetorical brilliance of the Protestant ministers of the black civil rights

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez/darling/no-chavez-speech.md)