There's pre-production, and the second part is when you start rehearsal. Pre-production was a very large learning curve for me.

My first job ever was selling balloons with my brother at parades when I was about six years old. My father wanted us to learn about money, how to make it, save it, spend it, etc.

When you are in the musical theater and you are someone who looks like me, you are constantly bending yourself, bending your voice to fit the job they've given you.

The toughest thing for me is doing on-camera stuff as a comedian.

We say that anytime budgets are balanced and an ample savings account has been set aside, government should just stop collecting taxes. Better to leave that money in the pockets of those who earned it, than to let it burn a hole, as it always does, in the pockets of government.

If you dream of something worth doing and then simply go to work on it and don't think anything of personalities, or emotional conflicts, or of money, or of family distractions; it is amazing how quickly you get through those 5,000 steps.

My dream was to set up my own e-commerce company. In 1999, I gathered 18 people in my apartment and spoke to them for two hours about my vision. Everyone put their money on the table, and that got us $60,000 to start Alibaba. I wanted to have a global company, so I chose a global name.

I quickly discovered that scientists go where the funding is, so I knew I had to start a research foundation. If you don't raise money and provide research grants, you'll never attract scientists, and if scientists aren't working on a cure, there isn't going to be a cure.