This chapter's epigraph comes from a line in the play The Merchant of Venice. It's a line about a merchant who's about to be killed by a ship's anchor, but the ship doesn't seem to want to kill him. Instead, it wants to kill the merchant, who is about to attack the ship. The merchant says he's not sure if the ship is going to attack or not, but he does know that it's safe to say that the ship isn't going to try to attack him.