Phil Klay

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

I was studying with Peter Carey, Colum McCann; but also, my fellow students were really critical readers for me.

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

Wrap parties can be really sad, actually, disorienting.

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.

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.