How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
[The kitchen] was quite a small room, with heavy black beams in the ceiling. By daylight it was amazingly dirty. The stones of the floor were stained and greasy, ash was piled within the fender, and cobwebs hung in dusty droops from the beams. There was a layer of dust on the skull. Sophie absently wiped it off as she went to peer into the sink beside the work-bench. She shuddered at the pink-and-gray slime in it and the white slime dripping from the pump above it. Howl obviously did not care what squalor his servants lived in. (4.5)
While the kitchen/main room of the castle is really homey and welcoming compared to, say, the hat shop that Sophie has just fled, it has still been neglected. Everything is filthy, grimy, and generally covered with slime—it needs Sophie and her care, which she's ready to give (in her own rough way).
There's a big difference between the work that Sophie chooses to do here and the work that she feels required to do at the hat shop. Where before her endless work frustrated her, in the moving castle her work gives her life a sense of meaning and structure because she makes a choice to do it.
Quote #5
Sophie was feeling decidedly queer again when they reached the Palace. Its many golden domes dazzled her. The way to the front entrance was up a huge flight of steps, with a soldier in scarlet standing guard every six steps. The poor boys must have been near fainting in the heat, Sophie thought as she puffed her way dizzily up past them. At the top of the steps were archways, halls, corridors, lobbies, one after another. Sophie lost count of how many. At every archway a splendidly dressed person wearing white gloves—still somehow white in spite of the heat—inquired their business and then led them on to the next personage in the next archway. (13.1)
Sophie's home country of Ingary is like any fairytale land, and fairytales aren't really focused on realistic systems of government or anything like that. Of course there's a King, and of course he lives in a fabulous palace—that's what happens in fairytales. But this home is the one place in the book that doesn't really say anything about its occupant's personality. It's an official residence rather than a home. When Sophie meets the King, she also has this sense of doubled vision: that he is a private person and an official King in the same body.
Quote #6
"Sophie, if we were to take that hat shop, what would we sell?"
Sophie found she had had enough of hats to last a lifetime. "Not hats," she said. "You can buy the shop, but not the business, you know."
"Apply your fiendish mind to the matter," said Howl. "Or even think, if you know how." And he marched away upstairs again.
Five minutes later, down he came again. "Sophie, have you any preferences about the other entrances? Where would you like us to live?"
Sophie instantly found her mind going to Mrs. Fairfax's house. "I'd like a nice house with lots of flowers," she said.
"I see," croaked Howl and marched away again. (15.13-18)
Even though we've got about six chapters to go before Howl and Sophie actually declare their feelings, we can already see signs that Howl thinks a lot about Sophie. When he is trying to imagine what their new home space would be like, he designs it with Sophie in mind—even though he presents his plans in the least romantic, most casual way possible.