Nothing to lose

I like this quote from "The Book of Illusions" by Auster: "Men don't begin to live fully until their backs are against the wall." For some reason (that you don’t need to know), I have been thinking about that lately, before reading it and I was even discussing it with someone (that same one). The thought I had was closer to "When there is nothing left to lose, you can only win": Simple and plain but too simple and too plain. The discussion was about what men do when all their plans have failed. They stop planning. They start living.