How to use dired to return a file or directory name

[Tim Johnson]

Greetings :

Using :
GNU Emacs 24.3.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.4.2)
on Ubuntu 12.04

I'd like to be able to use dired (or something similar) to 
select a directory name or a desktop name.

1)Dired shows directories only
  Some action or command closes the dired buffer and returns a
  selected directory name as a string.

2)Dired shows directories and a filtered file list - example
  "*.emacs.desktop" and some action or command returns a selected
  file name as a string.

Feel free to point me to URLs or to help commands.
TIA
-- 
Tim 
tim at tee jay forty nine dot com or akwebsoft dot com
http://www.akwebsoft.com, http://www.tj49.com