Verb

Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it. That is your punishment. But if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing — an actor, a writer — I am a person who does things — I write, I act — and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.
— Stephen Fry

“If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life — but what I will call the artistic life — if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know you will never become anything, and that is your reward.”
— Oscar Wilde

I live on this earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I’m not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process — an integral function of the universe.”
— R. Buckminster Fuller

“This is how it feels to lead a faithful creative life: You try and try and try and nothing works. But you keep trying, and you keep seeking, and then sometimes, in the least expected place and time, it finally happens… You might earn a living with your pursuits or you might not, but you can recognize that this is not really the point. And at the end of your days you can thank creativity for having blessed you with a charmed, interesting, passionate existence.”
— Elizabeth Gilbert