Love is to love someone for who they are, who they were, and who they will be.

The line defines love as an act of comprehensive acceptance across time: embracing a person’s present self, their past (including mistakes, history, and formative experiences), and their future (growth, change, and unrealized potential). It implies that love is not conditional on a single momentary version of someone, nor on an idealized image, but is sustained through continuity and transformation. The phrasing also suggests a moral stance: to love well is to resist reducing a person to their worst chapter or demanding they remain static. In this sense, the quote frames love as both empathy (toward what shaped them) and commitment (toward who they are becoming).