I just love all the music. My grandma was a church organist for 40 years, and she got me into jazz music and great songwriters, Harold Arlen, George Gershwin, all those folks. I can't do it, but I have a profound respect for it.

Technically I can get out of my wheelchair and crawl around and do things, but when I've traveled and they've lost my wheelchair in transit, I feel like I need to be bound to it. My functionality and autonomy are often bound to this.

I haven't found anything that I've wanted to say that I couldn't do through either the Internet or the reality shows that I've done.

I do a lot of conferences, and I did a campaign with the Cerebral Palsy Foundation called "Just Say Hi." They get celebrities to record little messages about how you start a conversation with someone who has a disability, which is to "Just say hi."

CP is a struggle, but it's also been quite the tool for me to find success and deliver a message. It's something about me that's unique, so it'll open a few doors as well as keep a few closed. If you have the other tools that you develop as an individual, talents, things like that, you can harness this to do positive things in the world.

We'd done a couple of road trips with my big chair, and it was such a hassle if we didn't have the van with the foldout ramp. I figured: There's got to be some option that I can use on the go. Now I can go anywhere with my friends, which is a big, life-changing thing. I can sit on it for as long as I need to.

The waiter just flashed me something that said, "Chew bubblegum." Every morning, when I was about to go to the Oprah competition, my friend used to say this line in a video game to me: "It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum." There's a strict policy that you can't encourage anyone on a reality show, that would give them an edge.