# Quote — Richard Rodriguez, Darling

> Several days later, I tell a neighbor, a man I know well, that my mother died and that the floor lamp in my bedroom came on during the night. My neighbor is sincerely sorry to hear of my mother’s death; he supposes there must have been some kind of surge in the electrical grid. Our lives are so similar, my friends’ and mine. The difference between us briefly flares—like the lamp in my bedroom—only when I publish a religious opinion.

- 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/several-days-later

## 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)