Newbie question: Any way to improve this code?

[Gustavo Campanelli]

I'm begining to work in a program that cicles through a list of phrases 
(basically, a changing signature file). I started yesterday, and I only 
have abput 8 full hours of real Python experience.

So far I produced a code that succesfully reads an process the file, 
separating the phrases. Is there any way to optimize this code, so that 
I don't have to use the if for the first list member?

Now for the data.
The file is firmas.txt, it contains the following three example phrases

Frase 1
Frase 2
Frase 3

Note that this phrases are separated by newline characters. Upon reading 
the full file (it won't be long) I get this:

'Frase 1\nFrase 2\nFrase 3\n'

so, as you can see, the newlines are there.

My code is this (I know I should close the file, but so far the runtime 
is so small it doesn't really matter, that'll change)

import string
f = open("firmas.txt",'r') # open the file
texto = f.read ()
n = range (len (texto))
frases = [0]
frase =""
cant = 0
for a in n:
     if texto [a] != "\n":
        frase = frase + (texto [a])
     else:
         if cant == 0:
             frases [0] = frase
         else:
             frases.append (1)
             frases [cant] = frase
         cant +=1
         frase = ""

Well, that's it, thanks.

Gustavo Campanelli