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Anne Applebaum, the Pulitzer Prize winning author who is currently a Washington Post columnist and editorial board member, recently penned a profile of Condoleezza Rice for the Spectator of London's April 1 issue. It includes this delicious anecdote, which you probably would have never read in the Post itself:

Once, a couple of years back, Condi came to lunch at the Washington Post. What was said was off the record, but it hardly mattered; Condi, at least in my very limited experience, almost never says anything off the record that she wouldn't say on the record anyway. In any case, what was most interesting about this particular meeting was not what she said, but the fact that while seated in a room where some 15 people were happily eating two courses plus dessert, Condi herself ate nothing at all. She swept in with her entourage, took a seat in the middle of the table, refused everything but water and answered questions for an hour. Then she got up, shook hands and swept out again.

"Ice princess" isn't quite the word for this ex-figure-skating, ex-piano-playing, ex-academic star, since she's invariably amicable, even cheerful, and always upbeat. But to ordinary mortals, that level of self-control not even a piece of bread, for goodness sake is intimidating. As, of course, it was intended to be.