“Who taught her to read? Children taught me, said Florita Almada, there are no better teachers. Children with their alphabet books, who came to her house for toasted cornmeal. Such is life that just when she thought her chances of taking classes or going back to school (unlikely, since in Villa Pesqueria they thought Night School was the name of a brothel outside of San Jose' de Pimas) had vanished forever, she learned almost effortlessly to read and write. From that moment on she read everything that fell into her hands. In a notebook, she jotted down thoughts and impressions inspired by her reading. She read old magazines and newspapers, she read political flyers distributed every so often from pickups by young men with mustaches, she read the daily papers, she read the few books she could find and the books her husband got into the habit of bringing back each time he returned from his buying and selling trips to neighboring towns, books he purchased sometimes by the pound. Ten pounds of books. Fifteen bounds of books. Once he came back with twenty-five pounds. And she read every single one, and from each, without exception, she drew some lesson. Sometimes she read magazines from Mexico City, sometimes she read history books, sometimes she read religious books, sometimes she read dirty books, that made her blush, sitting alone at the table, the pages lit by an oil lamp's light that seemed to dance and assume demonic shapes, sometimes she read technical books about the cultivation of vineyards or the construction prefabricated houses, sometimes she read horror stores or ghost stories, any kind of reading that providence had placed within her reach, and she learned something each time, sometimes very little, but something was left behind, like a gold nugget in a trash heap, or, to refine the metaphor, said Florita, like a doll lost and found in a heap of somebody else's trash.”

—Arturo Belano