Malvina Reynolds

Malvina Reynolds (née Milder) (August 23, 1900 – March 17, 1978) was an American folk/blues singer-songwriter and political activist.

Quotes

• Train whistle blowin',
  Makes a sleepy noise;
  Underneath their blankets
  Go all the girls and boys.
  Rockin', rollin', ridin',
  Out along the bay,
  All bound for Morningtown,
  Many miles away.
  • Song Morningtown Ride

• And there's doctors and lawyers,
  And business executives,
  And they're all made out of ticky tacky
  And they all look just the same.
  • Song Little Boxes

• Love is something if you give it away,
  Give it away, give it away.
  Love is something if you give it away,
  You end up having more.
  It's just like a magic penny,
  Hold it tight and you won't have any.
  Lend it, spend it, and you'll have so many
  They'll roll all over the floor.
  • Song Magic Penny

• If you are a piano,
  You will laugh on ev'ry string,
  And if you are a girl or boy,
  You'll sing.
  • Song There's Music In The Air

• They don't know my head's full of me
  And that I have my own special thing,
  And there's no hole in my head.
  Too bad.
  • Song No Hole In My Head

• Little man stood at the Mayor's door,
  No one had ever seen him before,
  Dressed in clothes of a gayer mood
  Than ever are seen in Hollywood.
  • Song The Pied Piper

• There was a little boat sailed down the river,
  Hull was a cup and sail was a feather,
  Cum peedle ump pump pay.
  • Song Little Boat

• I don't mind failing in this world,
  I'll stay down here with the raggedy crew,
  'Cause getting up there means stepping on you,
  so I don't mind failing in this world.

• Song I don't mind failing in this world (1966)

Quotes about Malvina Reynolds

• There was a new popular music of protest. Pete Seeger had been singing protest songs since the forties, but now he came into his own, his audiences much larger. Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, singing not only protest songs, but songs reflecting the new abandon, the new culture, became popular idols. A middle-aged woman on the West Coast, Malvina Reynolds, wrote and sang songs that fit her socialist thinking and her libertarian spirit, as well as her critique of the modern commercial culture. Everybody now, she sang, lived in "little boxes" and they "all came out just the same."
  • Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States