Readers do not owe us their attention. Every extra fact in a story competes with the facts that actually move the narrative forward.
When I cut a paragraph I loved, I paste it into a “parking lot” doc. Most of it never comes back—and that is how I know it was decoration, not load-bearing structure.
Quotes should sound like a person talking, not a press release cosplaying as speech. If a quote does not reveal motive, consequence, or something only that speaker could say, paraphrase and keep moving.
The goal is not a sparse page for aesthetics. The goal is respect: fewer jumps, fewer jargon walls, and a story someone can retell at dinner without checking their notes.