"Genius is a form of the life force that is deeply versed in illness, that both draw creatively from it and creates through it."
Adrian is determined to become a genius artist. He decides to embrace the madness of genius, to open his mind, by intentionally contracting syphilis. He takes the belief seriously enough to cut his life short via disease in exchange for whatever altered experience he may have with the disease.
"What an absurd torture for the artist to know that an audience identifies him with a work that, within himself, he has moved beyond and that was merely a game played with something in which he does not believe."
Adrian is the epitome of the starving artist. He throws himself into his work, devoting himself to it entirely. He hones in on the unique pain of hearing audiences treasure his art but knowing they can never truly understand how significant the ideas he's trying to communicate about life and about himself.
"But admiration and sadness, admiration and worry, is not that almost a definition of love?"
Zeitblom finds himself in a compromised position in his relation ship to Adrian. While he loves Adrian, he keenly understands that his love is of the unrequited variety. He's tortured to be around Adrian, to see him so happy with women and to see him so ill by Adrian's own doing. Needless to say the relationship is an unhealthy one, even if it is a meaningful one.
"The past was only tolerable if one felt above it, instead of having to stare stupidly at it aware of one's present impotence."
Both Adrian and Zeitblom keenly feel their indiscretions while making them. They're clear-headed enough to recognize when they're being impulsive or foolish, but that doesn't mean they have the discipline to choose the opposite. Instead they find themselves consciously making mistakes, knowing they're mistakes, and hating themselves for not resisting. But the mistakes are often so pleasurable at the same time that they experience a sort of tantric relationship to error.
