diff --git a/docs/user/quickstart.rst b/docs/user/quickstart.rst
index cdced6b9..618887f8 100644
--- a/docs/user/quickstart.rst
+++ b/docs/user/quickstart.rst
@@ -42,6 +42,11 @@ We can read the content of the server's response::
 Requests does its best to decode content from the server. Most unicode
 charsets, ``gzip``, and ``deflate`` encodings are all seamlessly decoded.
 
+When you make a request, ``r.encoding`` is set, based on the HTTP headers.
+Requests will attempt to use that encoding when you access ``r.content``. You
+can manually set ``r.encoding`` to any encoding you'd like (including ``None``),
+and that charset will be used.
+
 
 Make a POST Request
 -------------------