diff --git a/pkg/yqlib/expression_processing_test.go b/pkg/yqlib/expression_processing_test.go
index 93cb2047..aac09934 100644
--- a/pkg/yqlib/expression_processing_test.go
+++ b/pkg/yqlib/expression_processing_test.go
@@ -12,6 +12,11 @@ var pathTests = []struct {
 	expectedTokens  []interface{}
 	expectedPostFix []interface{}
 }{
+	{
+		`"\""`,
+		append(make([]interface{}, 0), "\" (string)"),
+		append(make([]interface{}, 0), "\" (string)"),
+	},
 	{
 		`[]|join(".")`,
 		append(make([]interface{}, 0), "[", "EMPTY", "]", "PIPE", "JOIN", "(", ". (string)", ")"),
diff --git a/pkg/yqlib/expression_tokeniser.go b/pkg/yqlib/expression_tokeniser.go
index 888b882d..e509c848 100644
--- a/pkg/yqlib/expression_tokeniser.go
+++ b/pkg/yqlib/expression_tokeniser.go
@@ -189,6 +189,7 @@ func stringValue(wrapped bool) lex.Action {
 		if wrapped {
 			value = unwrap(value)
 		}
+		value = strings.ReplaceAll(value, "\\\"", "\"")
 		return &token{TokenType: operationToken, Operation: createValueOperation(value, value)}, nil
 	}
 }
@@ -334,7 +335,7 @@ func initLexer() (*lex.Lexer, error) {
 	lexer.Add([]byte(`[Nn][Uu][Ll][Ll]`), nullValue())
 	lexer.Add([]byte(`~`), nullValue())
 
-	lexer.Add([]byte(`"[^"]*"`), stringValue(true))
+	lexer.Add([]byte(`"([^"\\]*(\\.[^"\\]*)*)"`), stringValue(true))
 	lexer.Add([]byte(`strenv\([^\)]+\)`), envOp(true))
 	lexer.Add([]byte(`env\([^\)]+\)`), envOp(false))