There are two types of realist. There is the one who offers a good deal of dirt with his potato to show that it is a real one, and the one who is satisfied with the potato brushed clean. I’m inclined to be the second kind. […] To me, the thing that art does for life is to clean it, to strip it to form.

Robert Frost (1874-1963) American poet

(Attributed)
    (Source)

Answering a letter as to whether he would prefer to be classed as a Realist, a Classicist, or a Regionalist. Quoted in Louis Untermeyer (ed.), Modern American Poetry, "Robert Frost" (1921 ed.). Untermeyer, a long-time friend of Frost's, included this quotation in all the biographical sketches he wrote for different poetry anthologies. I cannot find a primary source.