Interesting excerpt

I thought I would have lots to say about Cutting for Stone. I really enjoyed this book and I want to read his others also. I don't know WHY this particular story sticks with me, as I am so totally not a number person.
Shiva says his 2nd favorite number is 66 because if you take the numbers you can divide into sixty-six, including 66, and add them up, what you have is a square.What is your favorite number if 66 is your second favorite. He writes on the board 10, 213,223. Pray, tell us why would this number interest us? This number is the only number that describes itself when you read it. "one zero, two ones, three twos, and two threes!" It was the only bit of mathematics that stayed with me from that year.
Then there is this passage, sorry if this offends anyone, but I found it extremely funny. Marion is assisting his father Ghosh with a vasectomy. "Now, I tie off the cut ends with catgut. And then I tell the patient, 'No communication with wife allowed for the next ninety days'"
Ghosh turned to the patient and repeated the sentence. The patient nodded. "okay, you can communicate, say Good morning, darling and all that, but no sex for three months." The patient grinned. "okay, you can have sex, but you must wear a condom."
"I use interruptus," the patient said, speaking for the first time.
"You use what? Interruptus? Pull and pray? Good God, man! No wonder you have 5 kids! It's noble of you to try to get off the train at an earlier station, but it's unreliable. No sir. Interrupt the interrruptus, unless you want to reach your half dozen this year. You know what we call young men who use coitus interruptus?
The patient shook his head. "We call them Father! Daddy. Pater. Pappa. Pere. No sir, I have done the interrupting for you. Give me three months and you can tell your missus that she is not to worry because you will be shooting blanks, and there will be no more interruptions and you will be staying for dessert, coffee, and cigars."
Now for a more serious excerpt...Matron is talking with an American about funding their mission...God will judge us, Mr. Harris, by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don't think God cares what doctrine we embrace." I'll confess, Mr. Harris, that as I get older, my prayers aren't about forgiveness. My prayers are for money to do His work." "Do you know,  dear man, that in my darkest moments, you have so often been the answer to my prayers?"
This next story is when Ghosh was in prison...and a fellow prisoner would tell the story of Abu Kassem. It was a tale well known to children all over Africa: Abu Kassem, a miserly Baghdad merchant, had held on to his battered, much repaired pair of slippers even though they were the objects of derision. At last, even he couldn't stomach the sight of them. But his every attempt to get rid of his slippers ended in disaster: when he tossed them out of his window the landed on the head of a pregnant woman who miscarried, and Abu was thrown in jail. When he dropped them into the canal, the slippers choked off the main drain and caused flooding and off Abu went to jail.....The slippers in the story mean that everything you see and do and touch, every seed you sow, or don't sow, becomes part of your destiny. In order to start to get rid of your slippers, you have to admit they are yours, and if you do, then they will get rid of themselves. I hope one day you see this as clearly as I did in Kerchele. The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you  have and the ones you don't. If you keep saying your slippers aren't yours, then you will die searching, you'll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more. Not only our actions but also our omissions become our destiny.