I had to lift this directly from caterina.net. Not only is it a reference to a beautiful anecdote but also echoes subtly some of the themes i've tried to express here: memories, dreams, our confounding sense of identity.

Interviewer (Francine Prose): What was the first thing you wrote, the first thing you thought was really something?

Lydia Davis: I can remember a day when the teacher read aloud my story and also a story by a classmate. I loved her story. I wasn't so fond of mine. So I can say her story was a big influence on me, the first thing that I really remember liking. You know the book Iron and Silk where the English teacher asks a class of Chinese students to describe their most memorable experience? One of the students hesitates and hesitates and finally says that his most memorable experience was when his wife went to Beijing and ate duck there. He didn’t go. She went, but that was his most memorable experience.

-From an Interview with Lydia Davis.