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Top 25 Garrard Conley Quotes (2024 Update)

Garrard Conley Quote: “LIA was telling me on a daily basis that a loss of self meant a gain in virtue, and a gain in virtue meant I was drawing closer to God and therefore closer to my true heavenly self. But the means to that end – self-loathing, suicidal ideation, years of false starts – could make you feel lonelier, and less like yourself, than you’d ever felt in your life.”

1. “LIA was telling me on a daily basis that a loss of self meant a gain in virtue, and a gain in virtue meant I was drawing closer to God and therefore closer to my true heavenly self. But the means to that end – self-loathing, suicidal ideation, years of false starts – could make you feel lonelier, and less like yourself, than you’d ever felt in your life.”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “The chorus of voices will grow each year, revealing decades of pain, decades lost, families torn apart, relationships ruined because people outside the ex-gay world can never understand what we patients went through.”

2. “The chorus of voices will grow each year, revealing decades of pain, decades lost, families torn apart, relationships ruined because people outside the ex-gay world can never understand what we patients went through.”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “Masculine meant strong. Masculine meant straight. If we could only learn the essence of what it meant to be masculine, then we could learn the rest.”

3. “Masculine meant strong. Masculine meant straight. If we could only learn the essence of what it meant to be masculine, then we could learn the rest.”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “I came to therapy thinking that my sexuality didn’t matter, but it turned out that every part of my personality was intimately connected. Cutting one piece damaged the rest.”

4. “I came to therapy thinking that my sexuality didn’t matter, but it turned out that every part of my personality was intimately connected. Cutting one piece damaged the rest.”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “Cutting away my roots and the people I loved would transform me into a shell of the person I once was, an automaton stripped of all its gears.”

5. “Cutting away my roots and the people I loved would transform me into a shell of the person I once was, an automaton stripped of all its gears.”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “Love, over time, could either blossom or wither, become a source of wonder or a remembered ache.”

6. “Love, over time, could either blossom or wither, become a source of wonder or a remembered ache.”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “But love was always moving, always pushing us forward – always in action – and we often had no choice but to submit to where it lead us.”

7. “But love was always moving, always pushing us forward – always in action – and we often had no choice but to submit to where it lead us.”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “What my mother didn’t yet know about being gay in the South was that you never ran out of material, that being secretly gay your whole life, averting your eyes every time you saw a handsome man, praying on your knees every time a sexual thought entered your mind or every time you’d acted even remotely feminine – this gave you an embarrassment of sins for which you constantly felt the need to apologize, repent, beg forgiveness.”

8. “What my mother didn’t yet know about being gay in the South was that you never ran out of material, that being secretly gay your whole life, averting your eyes every time you saw a handsome man, praying on your knees every time a sexual thought entered your mind or every time you’d acted even remotely feminine – this gave you an embarrassment of sins for which you constantly felt the need to apologize, repent, beg forgiveness.”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “Sometimes it was what you left unsaid or undone that drew you into a state of wonder.”

9. “Sometimes it was what you left unsaid or undone that drew you into a state of wonder.”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “You cut out what was once dear to you, ignore the ache in the back of your throat, erase the details you want to forget.”

10. “You cut out what was once dear to you, ignore the ache in the back of your throat, erase the details you want to forget.”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “This affliction is what makes me smarter. This disadvantage is what gives me my ambition.”

11. “This affliction is what makes me smarter. This disadvantage is what gives me my ambition.”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “With each passing day at the facility, it seemed as though becoming straight was simply a matter of good lighting, of ignoring what you didn’t want to see.”

12. “With each passing day at the facility, it seemed as though becoming straight was simply a matter of good lighting, of ignoring what you didn’t want to see.”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “It seemed one talisman had activated the other: Mark’s number taught me that there were secret loves crouched and waiting in the last place you would likely go searching for them. What was Jesus’s compassion anyway but some well-crafted graffiti on the corridors of history, an invitation to follow Him into the most unlikely places? Love could come to you even in a room that seemed drained of it.”

13. “It seemed one talisman had activated the other: Mark’s number taught me that there were secret loves crouched and waiting in the last place you would likely go searching for them. What was Jesus’s compassion anyway but some well-crafted graffiti on the corridors of history, an invitation to follow Him into the most unlikely places? Love could come to you even in a room that seemed drained of it.”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “If I didn’t say too much, if people didn’t notice me, then I might also escape God’s roving Sauron eye.”

14. “If I didn’t say too much, if people didn’t notice me, then I might also escape God’s roving Sauron eye.”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “What did it feel like to not have to think about your every move, to not be scrutinized for everything you did, to not have to lie every day?”

15. “What did it feel like to not have to think about your every move, to not be scrutinized for everything you did, to not have to lie every day?”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “Keeping a secret, telling a lie by omission, made it much easier to see all of the other lies around me. An expert liar wasn’t merely an expert on his own lies, but those of others as well.”

16. “Keeping a secret, telling a lie by omission, made it much easier to see all of the other lies around me. An expert liar wasn’t merely an expert on his own lies, but those of others as well.”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “There is a mystery in this, a minor apocalypse somewhere between what these two men once knew of themselves- a holding on to something that, in turn, refused to let them go- and I long to know it, like the old prophets.”

17. “There is a mystery in this, a minor apocalypse somewhere between what these two men once knew of themselves- a holding on to something that, in turn, refused to let them go- and I long to know it, like the old prophets.”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “Trauma has made dark what was once painfully clear.”

18. “Trauma has made dark what was once painfully clear.”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “I’m sorry, ma’am,” the receptionist said, “but we have to keep his phone while he’s here.” For security reasons. “We’ll inform you if anything important pops up.” “Do you think that’s necessary?”

19. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” the receptionist said, “but we have to keep his phone while he’s here.” For security reasons. “We’ll inform you if anything important pops up.” “Do you think that’s necessary?”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “Cosby was telling us that a lack of sports in childhood could lead to effeminate behavior.”

20. “Cosby was telling us that a lack of sports in childhood could lead to effeminate behavior.”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “I’m sorry, ma’am,” the receptionist said. “Only clients allowed in the back. Security reasons.” “Security?”

21. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” the receptionist said. “Only clients allowed in the back. Security reasons.” “Security?”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “His idol was Billy Graham, an evangelist who used the public sphere to such an advantage that he had been able to shape our country’s political climate by whispering into the ears of no less than eleven presidents.”

22. “His idol was Billy Graham, an evangelist who used the public sphere to such an advantage that he had been able to shape our country’s political climate by whispering into the ears of no less than eleven presidents.”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “Love could come to you even in a room that seemed drained of it.”

23. “Love could come to you even in a room that seemed drained of it.”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “That night, I made the quiet decision to agree to whatever they had in mind, the shame and rage settling in my chest, filling up spaces I had previously reserved for love, spreading beneath my skin like invisible bruises. Unlike my mother, I had no way of purging myself, no way of staring into my watery reflection and obliterating my features with sick.”

24. “That night, I made the quiet decision to agree to whatever they had in mind, the shame and rage settling in my chest, filling up spaces I had previously reserved for love, spreading beneath my skin like invisible bruises. Unlike my mother, I had no way of purging myself, no way of staring into my watery reflection and obliterating my features with sick.”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “If I could have done it myself, I would have already done it: pried open my ribs and etched the Word onto my heart’s beating chambers. But it seemed my ex-gay counselors were the only ones with enough skill and experience to wield the scalpel.”

25. “If I could have done it myself, I would have already done it: pried open my ribs and etched the Word onto my heart’s beating chambers. But it seemed my ex-gay counselors were the only ones with enough skill and experience to wield the scalpel.”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “Often, it felt like a small victory to realize that another point of contact had lost its hold on me. I was in control of how quickly I lost the weight, and it felt good not only to feel the past leaving my body – all that fat like rings of a trunk now narrowing, disappearing – but also to see the shock on people’s faces, the lack of recognition at first glance, the double take. I was a different boy.”

26. “Often, it felt like a small victory to realize that another point of contact had lost its hold on me. I was in control of how quickly I lost the weight, and it felt good not only to feel the past leaving my body – all that fat like rings of a trunk now narrowing, disappearing – but also to see the shock on people’s faces, the lack of recognition at first glance, the double take. I was a different boy.”

— Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley Quote: “I nodded along with the others. The ex-gay lingo had by now become familiar to me, though it had come as a shock when I’d first read it on the facility’s website, when I’d first learned that the homosexuality I’d been trying to ignore for most of my life was likely “out of control,” that I could end up messing around with someone’s dog if I didn’t cure myself.”

27. “I nodded along with the others. The ex-gay lingo had by now become familiar to me, though it had come as a shock when I’d first read it on the facility’s website, when I’d first learned that the homosexuality I’d been trying to ignore for most of my life was likely “out of control,” that I could end up messing around with someone’s dog if I didn’t cure myself.”

— Garrard Conley

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