Elsewhere Logue uses light as the simile for silence – ‘as quiet as air’ – but I also loved this image of children completely absorbed in creating pictures.

See also the bestellar reviews, complete with rich quote-mosaics, of Adam Nicolson’s magnificent Why Homer Matters and Logue’s War Music, a muscular rendition of several books of the Iliad. 

‘All were as quiet as children drawing.’

Source: Christopher Logue, War Music, London: Faber and Faber, 2001, p. 53