"I just really responded to the performance of Zbigniew Cybulski. This is the story of someone who spends their young life in the sewers of Warsaw knowing nothing but war, and then carrying that life without any real reason for living other than continuing on as an urban warrior, falling in love with a bar maid, too late in your life, and essentially discovering lust and passion and maybe the love of his life — in the same day that his life catches up to him and kills him. [Director Andrzej] Wadja is one of my favorite filmmakers. I love Canal and all of the whole trilogy, but Ashes and Diamonds is a film I still think about."

"Most people know Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson album, but what's interesting is that in the early '90s, he actually went into a dark, weird phase that French people don't really like. They consider his music from that time weak. But for me, it's the best. It's porn, it's queer, it's rap before that was a thing in France. It's just him mumbling obscene things on drum-and-guitar heavy production, really raw and tough. At the same time, it's poetic. The contrast is interesting: it's beautiful but dirty. On this album, Gainsbourg is hiding behind nothing. You get everything: the obsessions, the lust, the weaknesses, the scars. You see everything ugly and everything beautiful."