"I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring"
About this Quote
Inspiration, Dodie Smith implies, isn’t a lightning strike so much as a furniture problem. The line is disarmingly plain, but it carries a dramatist’s quiet cunning: change the blocking, change the mind. “Sitting” is deliberately small-scale, almost domestic. She’s not preaching grand reinvention; she’s prescribing a tiny, repeatable disruption that any working writer or artist can actually do. New seat, new angle, new story.
The subtext is craft-minded and slightly skeptical of romantic mythmaking. Smith is gently demoting “inspiration” from mystical force to practical outcome. A different chair becomes a tool, like switching from pen to typewriter, or moving an actor downstage to reveal a new emotional temperature. In theater, where Smith made her name, perspective is literal: where you sit determines what you see, what you miss, what reads as intimate or exposed. That physical fact doubles as a psychological one. Habit narrows perception; novelty reopens it.
There’s also a faint, era-specific edge. Smith’s career ran through the early-to-mid 20th century, a period when many women’s creative lives were negotiated in constrained spaces and schedules. “Sitting in a place where you have never sat before” can sound like permission: you don’t need a pilgrimage, you need a slight trespass against routine. The intent isn’t self-help boosterism; it’s a working artist’s aside about how to trick your own attention into waking up.
The subtext is craft-minded and slightly skeptical of romantic mythmaking. Smith is gently demoting “inspiration” from mystical force to practical outcome. A different chair becomes a tool, like switching from pen to typewriter, or moving an actor downstage to reveal a new emotional temperature. In theater, where Smith made her name, perspective is literal: where you sit determines what you see, what you miss, what reads as intimate or exposed. That physical fact doubles as a psychological one. Habit narrows perception; novelty reopens it.
There’s also a faint, era-specific edge. Smith’s career ran through the early-to-mid 20th century, a period when many women’s creative lives were negotiated in constrained spaces and schedules. “Sitting in a place where you have never sat before” can sound like permission: you don’t need a pilgrimage, you need a slight trespass against routine. The intent isn’t self-help boosterism; it’s a working artist’s aside about how to trick your own attention into waking up.
Quote Details
| Topic | Embrace Change |
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