High school is to be endured. You live through it, then you're stronger. People who love high school have something wrong with them.
Stephenie Meyer has named religion as her greatest influence. She said, "Unconscioudly, I put a lot of my basic beliefs into the story."
Meyer acknowledges that her faith has influenced her work. In particular, she says that her characters "tend to think more about where they came from, and where they are going, than might be typical."
It wasn't until I knew that Twilight would be published that I began to think about whether my vampires were too much the same or too much different from the others. Of course, I was far too invested in my characters at that point to be making changes... so I didn't cut out fangs and coffins and so forth as a way to distinguish my vampires; that's just how they came to me.