Howl's Moving Castle

“I hope your bacon burns,” Calcifer said, muffled under the pan.

Calcifer went to sleep, in the way fires do, sinking among the logs until they were rosy cylinders plated with white ash, with only a hint of blue and green deep underneath.

“No, but I was thinking that people who run away from everything deserve every cold they get,” Sophie said.

Sophie began to feel that Wizard Howl and the Witch of the Waste should get together.

“They seem to be made for one another. Someone ought to arrange a match,” she remarked to the hat she was trimming at that moment.

I wondered whether to ask her if she would mind everywhere being covered with green slime when Howl’s hair went wrong; or if she minded coping with a man who had head colds like a drama queen; or being twisted round Howl’s little finger; or would it worry her that the man was a terrible coward; or always falling in love with other women;

Howl coughed piteously. “I shall go in disguise, probably as another corpse,” he said, trailing back toward the stairs

Then he stood up. “I feel ill,” he announced. “I’m going to bed, where I may die.” He tottered piteously to the stairs. “Bury me beside Mrs. Pentstemmon,” he croaked as he went up them to bed

“Annoyed?” said Sophie. “Why should I be annoyed? Someone only filled the castle with rotten aspic, and deafened everyone in Porthaven, and scared Calcifer to a cinder, and broke a few hundred hearts. Why should that annoy me?”

On the other hand, it is quite a risk to spank a wizard for getting hysterical about his hair.

“Howl’s very fickle,” said Calcifer. “He’s only interested until the girl falls in love with him. Then he can’t be bothered with her.”