“Things in their entirety were less fragile and therefore less beautiful than the pieces within the frame.”

Regan uses art to create a metaphor for her relationship with Aldo and the love story that unfolded between them. The Prologue reflects Regan’s thoughts in retrospect as she looks back on the relationship and ponders the moments that comprised their first months together. She comes to observe their love as a place where differences give each other meaning, foregrounding one of the book’s main themes, Love as a Composite of Contradictions and Opposites.

“She wondered what she was doing out there in all the mirror-shards of lives unlived.”

After meeting Aldo, Regan starts to think about the nature of time, emphasizing the theme of The Passage and Consequences of Time, as well as the idea of a multiverse and multiple versions of herself. This concept opens her mind to the idea of endless possibilities or reversing past mistakes, as well as the notion that she could one day be somebody different.

“Emptiness repulsed Regan, filling her with abject terror, but the concept of zero was something that Aldo had come to accept.”

Aldo and Regan are in many ways opposites, which is what draws them to one another as they each complete a part of the person that was missing in the other.