I make funny shows and put a positive message out there, showing people who have body image issues that... you don't have to look a certain way.

I thought this should be a travel show, because a lot of people with physical disabilities get discouraged.

What's great about this hotel [Sheraton Universal Hotel in Universal City, CA] is that I stayed here for a month when I was competing on the Oprah reality show. So it's like coming home.

I didn't have a girlfriend until I was 29, and I thought it was because I'm in a wheelchair. And I realized that it's not that, it's because I listened to what the dismissive part of society was telling me and accepted it as truth. There was nothing that was keeping me from dating or falling in love other than the fact that I was scared of being rejected. And everybody has that fear. That's a universal thing.

When I read the script [of Glee], the whole premise was that all the high school kids were being cruel to this kid in the wheelchair, and then the quarterback comes along and has a heart of gold and takes him out of a Porta Potty. That's too often what I see in media, that the characters with disabilities are there to make other people seem like heroes for treating the character with a disability with respect. Those are the kinds of roles that are out there.

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.

You can never walk a mile in someone elses shoes, but you can walk a mile in your own and be proud of it.