Cheech Marin Quotes

It was very hard for me, for most of my life, to feel American, or call myself American, and that is a very complicated topic that would require a very long conversation.

The beauty of America is that I don't have to deny my past to affirm my present. No one does. We can love this nation like a parent and still embrace our ancestral home like cherished grandparents.

It's a complicated issue, but I define myself as an American, primarily.

We [native-born] could not choose, but they [immigrants] could and did choose to be Americans.

I don't necessarily feel like I'm American. I wouldn't know what that feels like.

I love my heritage. I'm very proud of being Cuban. But I clearly understand that I am an American first.

I grew up in America - I was born and raised in Texas. I might look different, but at the same time, I'm pretty American.

My fiction occupies, actually, the very heart of American culture: this eternal question and struggle of what it means to be an American.

You can call me whatever you want to call me, but I am an American. No one can take that away from me. No, no one can.

Everybody wants to be American, it seems; I travel enough to know.

If I were to live my life over again, I would be an American. I would steep myself in America, I would know no other land.

I love America, and I love to say that my family is American.

I'm a Canadian citizen. But I always want to feel at home in Sri Lanka. I'm a member of both countries.

My parents were French and Irish and our family even has Spanish blood-and I do so love the United States and consider myself part American.

What makes America special is that people come here, assimilate and become American with all of the rights and responsibilities citizenship bestows.

The other aspect of American identity worth focusing on is the concept of America as a nation of immigrants. That certainly is a partial truth. But it is often assumed to be the total truth.

I really do feel part of America to my very bones; at the same time, I know that I come from somewhere else.

I'm so proud of my Chinese ancestry, but I was born and raised in America, and I really believe in American values, our American system, our freedom, our liberties.

Whether our forebears were strangers who crossed the Atlantic or the Pacific or the Rio Grande, we are here only because this country welcomed them in and taught them that to be an American is about something more than what we look like, or what our last names are, or how we worship.

Nationality is a very curious thing. The blood is Scots and the temperament is Scots, but I am, in fact, 100% American.

It takes more than just walking across the border to become an American citizen. It's what's in our souls.

I struggled with being a Latino growing up in Los Angeles. I felt very American. I still do. I went to 35 bar mitzvahs before I went to a single quinceanera. I could talk all day about my culture and what it means to me.

I am an American in every fiber of my body and in every heartbeat.

The spirit is at home, if not entirely satisfied, in America.

I became an American in 2006. It got me thinking about what is my America and what's my perception of America.