Stephenie Meyer: 12 of My 'Twilight' Inspirations

”I read it when I was nine,” says Meyer, ”and I’ve reread it literally hundreds of times. I do think that there are elements of Edward in Edward Rochester and elements of Bella in Jane. Jane was someone I was close to as a child — we were good friends! I think in some ways she was more real to me than any other fictional heroine.”

”The series influenced how my series turned out. Because I was never a fan of the stories where everything ends and they kiss at the wedding. Anne of Green Gables started out with her as a child, she had a very fully described adolescence, she had a book-long engagement, we got to see her wedding, we got to see her have her first child and lose her first child, we got to see her children grow up. We got the whole life, and I loved that.”

”This is crazy, but those Saturday-morning cartoons?I was always fascinated with the X-Men. I love the idea of a group of people and all of them can do something really well. They’re special, but they’re strongest when they work together. Maybe that comes from having a big family, but I always clicked into that kind of story. And I think that really came into play when I was subconsciously forming the Cullen family. Though I certainly wasn’t thinking about Cyclops when I was writing about them, I think it was there in the layers underneath.”

”They universally work for my writing style. If I have to write a scene of despair, ‘Apocalypse Please’ will work. And if I have to write an action scene, I can put on ‘Assassin.’ If I have to write a scene about love, ‘Starlight’ will work. They have so many emotions!”

”Essential to me in the beginning! Something about the tempo of their songs really kept the action in the novel. Otherwise it might have been a lot more sedate! ‘By Myself’ was a song I listened to in loops because just the sound of it, and the words of aloneness, the attackers behind you. That was really a great one for me.”

”For New Moon they were absolutely essential. They can put you into a suicidal state faster than anything I know. It’s just this heartbreaking music where the pain is done so beautifully. It really got me in the zone for writing about a person who is horribly depressed and yet not at all showing it. She’s not wearing black and refusing to come out of her room and yelling at the people she loves. She is completely containing it inside herself. Their songs really made it beautiful for me.”

”This band is so in touch for me with Jacob’s character. This really raw, uncontrolled emotion — where it’s not about some person who’s grown up and callused over and learned how to control things. It’s someone who’s feeling it for the first time and just wants to go out and blow things up. The song ‘Famous Last Words’ is a really romantic version of Jacob saying, ‘Okay, I’m putting myself out there, and you’re probably going to break me, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m still going to make the offer.’ ”

”The one movie that I watched a lot as a kid. It combined music into the story. Oh my gosh, with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. The music is Rachmaninoff, and every time you hear that song, you’re poised to fall in love. The relationship there is just this impossible thing that he makes possible. That had to be an influence on me.”

”When I’m on the road, I need a comedy that is as mindless as I can find. I watched Baby Mama on tour. I love Tina Fey. I think she may be the most adorable person on the face of the planet. And Amy Poehler is a close second.”

”When I’m not on tour, when I’m home — here comes the geek girl — what I have on almost all the time is the Home and Garden TV channel. I adore House Hunters International, I adore Designed to Sell; I just love looking at all the houses and watching people get their houses all prettied up. HGTV is a safe place, and everyone is always happy.”

”Isn’t Iron Man the best superhero movie that’s ever been done? That’s how you should feel coming out of a movie. You go in, you’re excited, you come out all jazzed and pumped. The best parts of that movie are when it was only him. I’m so glad he’s back.”

”There’s a scene where [the fictional character] Emma Thompson’s character created…tracks her down and walks into her living room and he goes, ‘Hey, I’m Harold Crick.’ And she collapses to the floor and says, ‘I know.’ That moment makes me cry. Imagine what that would be like! I actually did have a dream after Twilight was finished of Edward coming to visit me — only I had gotten it wrong and he did drink blood like every other vampire and you couldn’t live on animals the way I’d written it. We had this conversation and he was terrifying.”