Can someone help me find a John Steinbeck quote?

Question

The quote had to do with criticism towards The Grapes of Wrath. In the quote Steinbeck declared that The Grapes of Wrath was not an over exaggeration, if anything it was an understatement.

Answer 1

  You will find it @ brainyquote .com  

Answer 2

I believe that Steinbeck made the point to which you refer, albeit indirectly, in his acceptance speech when awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize for Literature:

"...Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches - nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair.

Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed.

The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, their responsibilities have been decreed by our species."

Answer 3

I could not find a quote by John Steinbeck, but found something similar by  Eleanor Roosevelt and by Darryl Zanuck who bought the screen rights to the novel

Eleanor Roosevelt said repeatedly that she had visited the migrant camps and never found The Grapes of Wrath exaggerated.

When Eleanor Roosevelt inspected the migrant camps, she vouched for the accuracy of The Grapes of Wrath . Steinbeck responded, “ . . . thank you for your words. I have been called a liar so constantly . . . .”

Zanuck (who bought the screen rights to the novel) insisted the novel was “a stirring indictment of conditions which I think are a disgrace and ought to be remedied.” In fact, Zanuck sent out investigators into the field who were sickened by what they saw and returned to say the actual conditions were even worse than Steinbeck showed.

Zanuck....after sending scouts to make sure that Steinbeck hadn't exaggerated the plight of migrant workers in California (as it turns out, the author had understated the horrible conditions)