Can someone explain to me the recent trend to add long quotes in Wikipedia articles? Very often the article starts with a concise definition, some additional e

Can someone explain to me the recent trend to add long quotes in Wikipedia articles? Very often the article starts with a concise definition, some additional explanations and then it has some random long quotation. For example some random critic's opinion about a book. Those quotes often do not provide much information - a concise text would simply be better. I have a feeling that the idea is to make Wikipedia easier to use, when in reality it becomes harder to use In fact those quotes often look like a hidden vehicle to try to promote the quoted person (if person X was quoted, but person Y was not quoted, then you could come to a conclusion that X is more important).