[biot]

This has long been a pet peeve of mine when it comes to online articles. I see the appeal for printed magazines because, if people are flipping pages, a large pull quote might catch their attention and get them to start reading. But for an online article, the fact that I'm scrolling down means that I am reading. And if I'm reading, there's nothing more annoying than re-reading the exact sentence that I just read.

If you want to do more intelligent pull quotes, paraphrase the quotes and use them as headings. For example:

   ... And then, Reader, I clicked on it.

   <div class="pullquote">The Container Store is my kind of porn</div>

   I'd been looking for a new job for months, the search wasn't going
   as well as I'd planned, and The Container Store, let's be honest, 
   is my kind of porn. ...

This has the advantage of piquing someone's curiosity ("Why is the Container Store a kind of porn for this person?") and they can carry on to read the following paragraph to find out why. For the next pull quote:

   <div class="pullquote">A job with benefits is a unicorn</div>

Of course, it too appears above the paragraph that mentions it. The point is to set the stage for what you're about to read, not just regurgitate in a large, bold font the text you just read... which wastes peoples' time.