Nothing is intrinsically valuable; the value of everything is attributed to it, assigned to it from outside the thing itself, by people.
Interpretation
Value is not inherent to objects; it depends on external perceptions and attributions by people.
This quote by John Barth suggests that worth is not an intrinsic property of items but rather is assigned by societal consensus. It implies that our understanding of value is subjective and shaped by human belief and context, challenging the notion that things possess inherent worth independent of human interpretation.
In practice
In a discussion about art, one might use this quote to illustrate how art's value is determined by collectors and society.
He wishes he had never entered the funhouse. But he has. Then he wishes he were dead. But he's not. Therefore he will construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator -- though he would rather be among the lovers for whom funhouses are designed.
You don't reach Serendib by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings... serendipitously.
In art as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity.
I particularly scorn my fondness for paradox. I despise pessimism, narcissism, solipsism, truculence, word-play, and pusillanimity, my chiefer inclinations; loathe self-loathers ergo me; have no pity for self-pity and so am free of that sweet baseness. I doubt I am. Being meβs no joke.
It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, "mad cow" disease, and many others, but I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.
We deal five minutes with a person and their conversion and then we spend the next fifty years trying to disciple a goat into a sheep. I'm not saying this because I'm angry. I'm saying this because countless people are being deceived.
What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard.
If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well. It were done quickly.
Our brains have been designed to blur the line between self and other. It is an ancient neural circuitry that marks every mammal, from mouse to elephant.
Behind the hieroglyphic streets there would either be a transcendent meaning, or only the earth.
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