Distilling the problem

From today's Vulture, an excerpt from an interview with cultural critic Chuck Klosterman, who has just had his first novel published:

We obviously have to ask you, why fiction?
Well, you know, everybody keeps asking me that question. I've been asked that question twenty times now. I keep coming up with different answers. I don't know what the correct one is. Have you ever written a novel?

No.
Why not?

Uh … We don't know. We guess we haven't had an idea that could be as big as a novel. We haven't had the time. We don't have the fortitude.
Yeah, I guess my answer is the complete opposite of those.