I think we ought to live happily ever after.

Yes, you are nosy. You're a dreadfully nosy, horribly bossy, appallingly clean old woman. Control yourself. You're victimizing us all.

Sophie did not care to think how Howl might react if Fanny woke him by stabbing him with her parasol.

Sorry, I've had enough of running away, Sophie. Now I've got something I want to protect. It's you.

I could cut a star out of paper and drop it.

You've probably all had those kinds of dreams that are like usual life, except that a lot of things are not the same, and you seem to know the future in them. Well, this is because these other worlds where two things can happen spread out from our world like rainbows, and sort of flow into one another-

Fantasy for me as a kid was real, and I had a fantasy about what life was, whether it was sort of wicked and dire, or wholly normal, or whatever. Anything really close to home is not, it seems to me, what a good book should be about.