Phil Klay

It's very strange getting out of the military, when you've lived in Iraq, and people you know are going overseas again and again. Some of them are getting injured.

'Redeployment' is a military term. It means to transfer a unit from one area to another.

There's a very particular way that the military speaks. There's a lot of profanity and a lot of acronyms.

Wrap parties can be really sad, actually, disorienting.

You have to be forward-moving and able to balance a lot of things at the same time. I attribute a lot of that to the Marine Corps and Juilliard both.

Recently, I was in Bernalda, my dad's ancestral home town in Italy. He has just refurbished a palazzo and turned it into a hotel, so we had my sister's wedding there. It was beautiful.