Q () was all by himself my college education. - Helene Hanff

... I was haunted by the fact that I didn't have an education and that I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write plays but I didn't seem to realize there was something wrong with not liking to read plays.

FPD! CRISIS! I sent that package off. The chief item in it was a 6-pound ham. I figured you could take it to a butcher and get it sliced up so everybody would have some to take home. But I just noticed on your last invoice it says: "B. Marks, M. Cohen." Props. ARE THEY KOSHER? I could rush a tongue over. ADVISE PLEASE!

... the surest sign that a new year is beginning is that everybody is on a self-improvement-drive. From at 8th Street, to at 68th, half of New York is registering at some college for night courses in Philosophy or the History of Art which most of them will drop out of on the first sleeting winter night. And I, who hate novels, have begun lugging Joyce Carol Oates and V. S. Naipaul and Doris Lessing home from the library, in an attempt to Improve my Mind.