“Where are you? - I'm upstairs in our room rubbing your expensive creams on my knees, I just want to see what happens. Don't try to get in, I have blocked the door with huge lumps of Turkish delight and I'm listening to showtunes. Stay away.”

Bluebird
The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992)
Context: there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see you.
... I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
... he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
... and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

"No Matter How I Try" (song)
Gilbert O'Sullivan, "No Matter How I Try" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gM6bo-QhS0 (song on YouTube)
(+ Live performance on Top of the Pops. On YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBqEgnBNKDI
(+ Live performance in Japan, 1993. On YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsQu04bOm9I
Song lyrics

Responding to a press conference question as to whether he was a "card-carrying" member of the Black Muslims, as quoted in The New York Times (27 February 1964) http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F4091EF7355D17738DDDAE0A94DA405B848AF1D3; also in Sports Illustrated (9 March 1964).
Context: I believe in Allah and in peace. I don't try to move into white neighborhoods. I don't want to marry a white woman. I was baptized when I was twelve, but I didn't know what I was doing. I'm not a Christian anymore. I know where I'm going and I know the truth, and I don't have to be what you want me to be... I'm free to be what I want.

Source: Noughts & Crosses

On letting his work speak regarding race and class in “James McBride Says Fiction Writing Allows Him More Freedom” https://www.npr.org/2017/10/01/554933082/james-mcbride-says-fiction-writing-allows-him-more-freedom in NPR (2017 Oct 1)

Eliza Dushku in Black and White http://www.elizadushkuonline.com/html_articles/2002/06_improper-bostonian.html

O interview (2003)
Context: The whole society is obsessed.... I'm not complaining — I'm just saying, "Don't be too impressed with me. Don't try to dress like me or wear your hair like mine. Find your own style. Don't spend your savings trying to be someone else. You're not more important, smarter, or prettier because you wear a designer dress." I only wear the expensive clothes because I get them free and I'm too lazy to go out and look for my own. I, a rich girl from Mexico, came here with designer clothes. And one day when I was starving in an apartment in Los Angeles, I looked at my Chanel blouses and said, "If only I could pay the rent with one of these." … In those days, the rag I used to dry my dishes was more useful. Now many who start in this business come to me for advice and ask, "How do I get started?" And I have to say, "I honestly have no idea." I think it's a bunch of accidents that happen to you and somehow you survive them and take advantage of them and something magical happens — and you have an agent.

May 2007, http://www.sundaysun.co.uk/sport/north-east-football/2007/05/29/derby-county-1-west-brom-0-79310-19213006/
Billy made these remarks shortly after gaining promotion to the Premiership with Derby County

p. 18 Dues Paid, Anastacia reapproches to U.S. https://books.google.it/books?id=Ug8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA18, Billboard, June 1, 2002.
General Quotes