How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Sophie opened the door and the cat crawled inside. The cat crawled to the hearth, where Calcifer was down to the merest blue flicker, and, with an effort, got its front paws up onto the chair seat. There it grew rather slowly into Howl, bent double. (16.42)
The moving castle is interesting as a home. It's as changeable as Howl himself, what with its multiple entrances, its windows onto many places, and the fact that it, well, moves. But when Howl gets back from fighting the Witch, the moving castle still seems like an absolutely stable place of refuge—like the only place that Howl can feel really safe.
Quote #8
The room rocked and settled. For a few instants, while the smoke still hung everywhere, Sophie saw to her amazement the well-known outlines of the parlor in the house where she had been born. She knew it even though its floor was bare boards and there were no pictures on the walls. The castle room seemed to wriggle itself into place inside the parlor, pushing it out there, pulling it in there, bringing the ceiling down to match its own beamed ceiling, until the two melted together and became the castle room again, except perhaps it was now a bit higher and squarer than it had been. (17.15)
There is a lot of poetic justice to the fact that Sophie returns to the hat shop where she started, the same hat shop from which the Witch's curse ironically liberated her. But this Sophie is a very different person from the one who was almost too shy to leave the shop to visit her sisters at the start of the book. She has more confidence now to face the place where she came from, and to make peace with her family.
Quote #9
They went through and out into the yard Sophie had known all her life. It was only half the size now, because Howl's yard from the moving castle took up one side of it. Sophie looked up beyond the brick walls of Howl's yard to her own old house. It looked rather odd because of the new window in it that belonged to Howl's bedroom, and it made Sophie feel odder still when she realized that Howl's window did not look out onto the things she saw now. She could see the window of her own old bedroom, up above the shop. That made her feel odd too, because there did not seem to be any way to get up into it now. (17.44)
The fact that Sophie can see the window of her old bedroom but can't actually get to it anymore suggests symbolically that she can't just fit back into her old life. Howl, Michael, and Calcifer have changed Sophie in the same way that the moving castle has altered the hat shop and its yard: you can still see the outlines of Sophie's old ways, but her personality is quite different now—or at least, the ways that she is willing to show that personality have really changed.