How we cite our quotes: (Section.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
I studied night and day and within two weeks I was promoted to the sixth grade. […] I told the family emphatically that I was going to study medicine, engage in research, make discoveries. Flushed with success, I had not given a second’s thought to how I would pay my way through a medical school. But since I had leaped a grade in two weeks, anything seemed possible, simple, easy.(1.5.46)
If Doogie Howser did it, why not Richard Wright?
Quote #5
Though I had never had any assignments from a college professor, I had made much harder and more prolonged attempts at self-expression than any of them. (2.16.5)
Even though Richard only gets four years of schooling, he tries harder than anyone else to learn and keep learning. We call these kinds of people "perpetual students" or "lifelong learners." They’re the ones sitting at the front of the class raising their hand all the time and ruining the curve for everyone. Remember that if you meet them in the wild.
Quote #6
"No, I know the masses of Negroes very well," I said. "But I don’t believe that a revolution is pending. Revolutions come through concrete historical processes... "
"You’re an intellectual," he said, smiling disdainfully. (2.16.190)
So, apparently "intellectual" means a person who uses reason instead of emotion. How’d that work out for you guys? We’re pretty sure we would have noticed in history class if there’d been a great Communist uprising in America during the Great Depression.