# Quote — Richard Rodriguez, Darling

> It would be another two decades before I came upon the words that made me think I had a story to tell—the opening words of Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: “You must not tell anyone,” my mother said, “what I am about to tell you.” The immigrant mother’s prohibition to her daughter reminded me of my own mother’s warning about spreading “family secrets.” In the face of California’s fame for blatancy—in the face of pervasive light, ingenuousness, glass-and-aluminum housing, bikinis, billboards—Mrs. Hong recommended concealment.

- 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/it-would-be-another

## 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)