Why can't a class or an interface receive private or protected access modifiers?

Question

I am reading some Java text and the text says that we can only apply public or default access modifier for class and interface. Therefore, it is a

Answer 1

top level classes can only have public or default access, but internal classes can have private access:

public class TestClassAccess
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        new TestClassAccess().new TestClassPrivateAccess();
    }

    private class TestClassPrivateAccess
    {
        TestClassPrivateAccess()
        {
            System.out.println("I'm a private class");
        }
    }
}