diff --git a/docs/user/quickstart.rst b/docs/user/quickstart.rst
index d046640e..cb4ef579 100644
--- a/docs/user/quickstart.rst
+++ b/docs/user/quickstart.rst
@@ -131,7 +131,8 @@ There's also a builtin JSON decoder, in case you're dealing with JSON data::
     >>> r.json()
     [{u'repository': {u'open_issues': 0, u'url': 'https://github.com/...
 
-In case the JSON decoding fails, ``r.json`` raises an exception: ``ValueError:
+In case the JSON decoding fails, ``r.json`` raises an exception. For example, if
+the response gets a 401 (Unauthorized), attempting ``r.json`` raises ``ValueError:
 No JSON object could be decoded``