How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
She looked sleepily and slyly across at the apprentice. It rather surprised her to find him such a nice, polite boy. After all, she had forced her way in quite rudely and Michael had not complained at all. Perhaps Howl kept him in abject servility. But Michael did not look servile. He was a tall, dark boy with a pleasant, open sort of face, and he was most respectably dressed. In fact, if Sophie had not seen him at that moment carefully pouring green fluid out of a crooked flask onto black powder in a bent glass jar, she would have taken him for the son of a prosperous farmer. How odd! (3.25)
At the start of Howl's Moving Castle we know that Sophie believes a lot in how things should be—for instance, Howl lives in a dark castle that runs around the hills of Market Chipping, so he should be an evil wizard who eats hearts. But as Sophie spends time in the moving castle, we can see her realizing more and more that people don't have to follow a given script. Here Michael looks like a farmer's son but he is a great apprentice to the Wizard Howl.
Quote #5
[Sophie] cleaned the bathroom next. That took her days, because Howl spent so long in it every day before he went out. As soon as he went, leaving it full of steam and scented spells, Sophie moved in. "Now we'll see about that contract!" she muttered at the bath, but her main target was of course the shelf of packets, jars, and tubes. She took every one of them down, on the pretext of scrubbing the shelf, and spent most of the day carefully going through them to see if the ones labeled SKIN, EYES, and HAIR were in fact pieces of girl. As far as she could tell, they were all just creams and powders and paint. (5.45)
One of the things we like about this whole sequence where Sophie is cleaning the castle is that this is a house where two dudes and a fire demon live. In other words, of course it's covered in slime. But by and large, for an "evil" wizard's place the moving castle is pretty ordinary in appearance. Howl's bathroom does have an unusual number of personal care products but hey—the man likes to look good.
Quote #6
"You look wonderfully rich and stately!" Michael said to her.
"She does me credit," said Howl, "apart from that awful old stick."
"Some people," said Sophie, "are thoroughly self-centered. This stick goes with me. I need it for moral support."
Howl looked at the ceiling, but he did not argue. (12.7-10)
At present there is about a seventy-year age difference between Howl and Sophie, but be that as it may, they squabble like an old married couple. Howl can't resist the opportunity to tease her, and Sophie is always ready to give it right back to Howl. Honestly, they seem like a cute couple—even if he is twenty-seven and she's about eighty-seven.