Love After Love Love Quotes

Ouch—this title gives us an ice-cream headache. It’s deliberately ambiguous, we think. What is the difference between the first “love” and the second “love,” apart from when they take place? Or is there even a difference? We tend to talk about love in many ways: good, bad, complicated, simple. But is there really a difference when it comes right down to it?

Stand aside, Shmoopers. This one we can handle. It’s pretty clear that our speaker is talking about self-love here. Not loving yourself—either because you’re too busy loving someone else, or because you can’t find anything to love in yourself—makes you a “stranger” to yourself. And that’s not good.

The good news, according to our speaker, is that you have a #1 fan right there with you at all times: it’s you. Sure, you may lose track of yourself (by being too self-critical, or by putting all of your energy into a relationship with someone else). At the end of the day, though, we all have the capacity for self-love.