Oh, and to skew text, select the text box, go to Item > Modify... Go to the Text tab and enter a value for Text Skew. As far as I know, you have to apply this effect to the entire text box, not just a small selection.
Incidently, if you draw your text on a path and go to Item > Modify, there are a few more text effects available to you which may be useful. As RyanPace noted, though, it's not one of Quark's strong points and you might want to use another app to get sophisticated effects.